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THE LURE 


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THE LURE 


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BY 

E. S. STEVENS 

AUTHOR OF “THE VEIL,” “ THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD,” 

“THE EARTHEN DRUM.” 


NEW YORK 

JOHN LANE COMPANY 

MCMXII 




Copyright, 1912, by 
John Lane Company 


gCU305887 

5 * 10 = ™ 


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DEDICATED TO 


MR. HUGHES MASSIE 

TO WHOSE PATIENCE AND KINDNESS I OWE MORE 
THAN CAN BE SET DOWN 







































THE LURE 


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PART I 


CHAPTER I 

A NNE MOORHOUSE was a tall, thin, coltish 
girl of twenty-two. There was something un- 
developed about her, the dimples and round- 
ness that are unassociated with girlhood were absent ; 
yet she was not ungraceful in her youthful way, and 
she had the Moorhouse fashion of carrying the head 
• — you may see it in the family portraits — and a pair 
of extraordinary brown eyes. They were intelligent, 
humorous, orchard-stealing brown eyes; eyes capable 
of enthusiasm and exaggerations ; brown eyes which 
promised the womanhood which her leanness denied 
her. 

She wore her clothes well, such as she had to wear, 
for at the moment of which I am writing the ward- 
robe which she possessed was attenuated. Miss Bar- 
rett, who was the proprietress of the boarding-house 
in which Miss Moorhouse lived (at twenty-five shil- 
lings a week inclusive), declared that the girl looked 
distinguished. She then usually added she knew for 
a fact that Miss Moorhouse had a cousin who was a 
general, and that an aunt who was Lady Moorhouse 
lived in Hans Crescent. It pleased her to think that 
she had a well-connected young woman at her house 
in Gordon Street. The other guests could boast little 
in the way of relations: there was Mr. Schelling, a 
German clerk ; Mrs. Lumley, a widow, with an accen- 
tuated coiffure, who had been on the stage ; Mr. Hertz, 
I 


2 


THE LURE 


a Cockney Jewish music-shop assistant; an elderly so- 
licitor, and a daily governess. 

Mr. Hertz had an expansive soul, and Anne found 
him a difficult neighbor at table, for he was easily 
offended, and she would not have hurt his feelings 
for the world, though she really could not accept his 
frequent and pressing invitations to come to Kew on 
Sunday afternoons and have an eightpenny tea. 

But she had an eager interest in her fellow-creatures, 
and she found the specimens of humanity at the 
boarding-house amiable and lovable in many ways. 
Life in London was absorbingly interesting after her 
quiet existence in a remote Dorset village with a vale- 
tudinarian father. But hers was no dilettante's in- 
terest in it. At the instant at which I introduce her, 
her young brows were puckered by the discovery that 
she had exactly seven pounds and ninepence halfpenny 
left in the world. Her board, fares and minor ex- 
penses cost her about thirty shillings a week at the 
lowest figure. 

“It's simply frightful how quickly a hundred pounds 
goes,” she reflected, biting at the pencil with which she 
had made her calculations. “No wonder poor Tony 
is always in debt. Of course, there was the premium 
to the college — that was £20 — and some bits of clothes, 
but, oh, I did think it would last better than that. Lve 
tried to be economical.” 

At first, to be independent had been a splendid ad- 
venture. When she entered the College of Journal- 
ism, she imagined that as soon as her course was over, 
she would, as the prospectuses had led her to suppose, 
embark at once upon a brilliant and well-paid career 
as editor or writer. But she had left the College 
seven weeks now, and though she had ascended many 
office stairs and taken many a fat envelope to the post- 
office, she had won nothing more hopeful than a sheaf 


THE LURE 


3 


of returned manuscripts and a few kind words from 
busy men who had not the heart to rebuff her youth 
too harshly. 

“There is always room for clever and energetic 
people/' Mrs. Courcy, the Principal of the College, 
had told her, when Anne had inquired about the 
chances of employment at her office in a small court 
off Chancery Lane. “And appearance helps, too, as it 
does in every profession,” she added, taking out a 
pocket mirror in an absent-minded way and applying 
a powder-puff to her small nose. She was a very dim- 
inutive little woman, possessed of colossal energy and 
enterprise. The College was only a part of her busy 
life; she edited several papers herself, and was, in 
addition, a beauty doctor with an establishment in 
Bond Street. 

Anne found many disillusions awaiting her. “Use 
the jargon of the moment, and put on an air of omni- 
science, and you're three-quarters a successful journal- 
ist,” Mrs. Courcy told her, and though Anne's sense 
of honesty was sometimes affronted, and her belief in 
the printed page forever gone, she gradually began to 
look upon journalism as a species of game, a stageland 
where deceptions were legitimatized which would not 
be tolerated in daily life. 

When she left, Mrs. Courcy furnished her with a 
few introductions. 

“I consider you a very promising pupil, a, very 
promising pupil, indeed/' she said to Anne on one oc- 
casion, patting her shoulder, or rather her waist, for 
she was not tall enough to reach to Anne's poplar-like 
height. 

But day by day and week by week had gone by, 
and Anne found her quest infinitely more doubtful 
than she had imagined in the first flush of confidence. 

She dropped an envelope upon which she had been 


4 


THE LURE 


making minute financial calculations, and went with 
an impatient movement to fling the window wide and 
allow the smell of cooking to escape. Her room was 
on the topmost floor. The wallpaper was patterned 
and dingy, the ewer had been riveted, the bedspread 
was tinged with a gray which told of a long career 
of visits to cheap laundries. Outside there was a vista 
of chimney-stacks and slate roofs, of sooty walls and 
telegraph posts. A dejected cat prowled over the 
nearest roof in the furtive way of his tribe. A dank 
tress of ivy, half-killed by the blacks, trailed over the 
wall of the adjoining yard. The sky, already lower- 
ing, was murkied by the smoke-polluted atmosphere. 

"If only there were something nice to look at,” 
thought Anne with a sigh. She had the fastidious 
Moorhouse love of beauty, a love which had been car- 
ried to such fantastic lengths by her father that when 
he died the estate was heavily mortgaged. What was 
left over after the wreck was Tony’s; and he needed 
every penny of it if he were to stay on in his regiment. 
Anne refused her brother’s offer of an allowance. 
She had a legacy of £100. The will had been made 
years ago, and it was obvious that her father had in- 
tended to leave her otherwise provided for. But with 
characteristic inability to seize opportunity he had put 
off making a fresh will until his affairs had righted 
themselves; a happy consummation which was never 
arrived at. 

Anne had read an advertisement of “The College 
of British Journalism for Women,” and her aspira- 
tions fired by a prize gained in the local paper for an 
essay, she paid her fees and entered upon her Fleet 
Street career with the fine faith of ignorance. 

“There’s nothing for it,” said Anne, desperately, 
brushing some soot from her fingers which had set- 
tled upon them during her window-opening opera- 


THE LURE 


5 

tions. *‘I must write to some of mother’s people. 
Though we’ve never seen them, they’re relations after 
all, and I could pay them back, even if I had to give 
up journalism and take to governessing. There’s 
Aunt Helen — but then Aunt Helen is always in debt 
herself. So’s Tony; I couldn’t ask him, poor boy. . . 
Now it’s raining. And I’ve holes in all my shoes. If 
only the sun were shining, I shouldn’t be so depressed. 
. . . Yes, come in!” 

For there was a tap at the door. 

“A messenger boy, mees,” said the voice of Ludwig, 
the waiter, facetiously known as “Earwig” by Mr. 
Hertz. “He vaits an answer.” 

Anne picked up the pencil which she had dropped 
upon the floor in her impatient despair, and took the 
note. It might be an answer to her prayers for work. 
But her face fell again at the sight of a well-known 
crest on the envelope. 

'Dearest Anne,” read the letter, headed na, Hans 
Place, W. 

“Will you come to tea with me this afternoon? It’s 
raining, but you can take a taxi, can’t you? Do, 
there’s a dear child, I particularly want to see you. 
The Chows are well, and send you lots of pretty 
black licks. 

Your Aunt Helen.” 
Anne hunted up some writing paper, and wrote : 
“Dearest Aunt Helen, 

“Please excuse pencil. I’ll come at four. Love to 
the Chows. 

Your affectionate niece, 

“Anne.” 

“Give that to the boy, Ludwig,” said she. 

“What does that line under particularly mean?” 


6 


THE LURE 


wondered Anne. “She isn’t usually mysterious. Any- 
way it’s time that I went there to tea, and she’s a dear. 
How like her to suggest that I should take a taxi. . . 
I wish my hat weren’t so battered. The wing looks 
all drowned and dissipated. It is hateful being so 
ugly and dowdy. Can’t be helped !” 


CHAPTER II 


L ADY HELEN MOORHOUSE was a Charming, 
irresponsible woman of thirty-eight who lived 
in a happy-go-lucky way, and was usually in 
debt in spite of an ample income. She had a melting 
gray eye, and a sympathetic manner which was almost 
emotional. She threw her whole soul into those speak- 
ing eyes while she was talking to a person, and forgot 
them afterwards. She told Anne with a tender em- 
brace, when her niece had first come to town, that 
she could count on her for a great deal of help. “You 
must have useful introductions, darling, of course, and 
meet the very nicest people. I’ll give a little dinner- 
party especially for your benefit.” 

But these excellent and sincere intentions had all 
slipped out of her mind, the little dinner-party never 
came off, and on the few occasions on which Anne 
had been to the house for tea or dinner, she had met 
nothing more interesting than a barrister obviously in 
love with her aunt, one or two fashionable women 
whose clothes made Anne conscious of her own shab- 
biness, and Lady Helen’s pet impresario. 

Anne bore no malice ; her aunt’s instincts were gen- 
erous, only she happened to be one of the people with 
whom intention takes the place of action. 

To-day Anne found her in the boudoir off her 
bedroom, on the chintz-covered sofa, with two discon- 
solate and unnoticed Chows at her feet, a third sulk- 
ing by the window, while their mistress’s attention 
was fixed on a quantity of loose papers on her lap. 

7 . 


8 


THE LURE 


“Oh, you dear child, I am glad you’ve come! I’ll 
ring for tea at once. You adore muffins, don’t you; or 
is it someone else who does? Anyway, it’s muffins.” 

“I do like them,” said Anne, who had never before 
expressed an opinion on the edible. 

“Ah, then it was you. My dear, I’m so glad to see 
you. I’ll tell you why when you’ve had tea. Down 
Pooh-bah, down Sing-Sing! Did they feel neglected, 
the darlings! Well, mumsie’s busy and little dogs 
mustn’t worry. . . . Anne, you dear thing, you’re 
thinner than ever. I do hope they feed you at that 
horrible boarding-house. You should take Sanatogen 
in milk every day, and meat-jelly. I really must send 
you some from my chemist’s. . . . Now, one thing more, 
will you have time to come on with me to a musical 
At Home at Signor Simonetti’s after we’ve tea’d and 
talked? If you can, I’ll tell Wilkins to have the motor 
ready at half-past five.” 

“Do you think I’m dressed nicely enough?” asked 
Anne, frankly. 

Her aunt regarded her with instant gravity. 

“Well, dear, your coat and skirt are plain and well- 

cut, though rather out of date . . . but the hat ” 

She paused seriously. “I know! You shall wear one 
of mine. I’m sure I have one that will suit you. Very 
well, that’s settled. . . . Just ring for me; one minute 
. . . Wilkins, the motor at half-past five, punctually.” 

“The Chows are looking well,” said Anne, for want 
of something better to say. 

“They’re loves, aren’t they? But they’re very hurt 
in their mindseses because mumsie’s been too busy to 
pet them. Oh, my dear, I’ve had such worries! 
Sugar? No! Cream? Yes! Now, Anne, darling, 
tell me all about yourself. Do you like this little 
gown ?” 

“It’s very pretty,” Anne replied. 


THE LURE 


9 


“Drecoll. I think it does suit me. Just a little sim- 
ple thing, run up for twenty pounds. . . . Do take 
some muffins, and talk to me about your doings. It is 
so nice to see you again. I wanted to have asked you 
to dinner to meet some very influential people last 
night — Sir Richard Cloudesley, who runs the Some- 
thing Review, you know. But, darling, I had a woman 
too many as it was. Somehow there is always a woman 
too many. I wished that Mrs. Laffan hadn’t been 
there; to tell you the truth, she was just a tiny bit 
unmixable. She’s the sort of woman that gets on 
splendidly with subalterns and pretty boys, and the 
setting last night didn’t agree with her. I had to put 
her next to a vegetarian Canon who’s a spiritualist 
because they were two odds who didn’t pair off, and 
I knew they wouldn’t take to each other. The others 
paired beautifully. The whole art of giving dinners, 
next to food, is to know how to pair. A man cares 
what he eats, a woman cares what she sits next. Do 
take another muffin. Oh, my dear, I’m longing to tell 
you my news, only I’m afraid you’ll think me dread- 
fully foolish — you’re such a clever child.” 

“You are going to get married again,” suggested 
Anne, remembering the barrister. 

“Good gracious, Anne, nothing so foolish as that! 
I think a happy widowhood is a woman’s greatest 
blessing. Not that I wasn’t a happy wife, dear, of 
course ; but widowhood has many advantages. Never 
be a wife, Anne, be a widow. I wouldn’t marry again 
for worlds. . . . No, dear, it’s something else. Do 
have another muffin. They’re so indigestible; I can- 
not touch them myself. ... Of course, to you it 
would be nothing at all, but the responsibility is kill- 
ing me. Anne, I have become an editor ! That is to 
say, an editress. Or do you say woman-editor ?” 

Anne doubted her ears. Her aunt lay back on a 


10 


THE LURE 


cushion with an air of drama. The Chows snuggled 
up to her expectantly, resenting her callous behavior 
about the sugar-bowl. 

Lady Helen’s pretty gray eyes were like a child’s 
in their appealing helplessness, and their sense of 
naughty effect. 

“Editress of what?” asked Anne. 

“Well, dear, not of a whole paper. But of a page.” 

She displayed a miniature dummy magazine. At 
the top of a blank page, surrounded by an edging of 
cupids and ribbons was — 

“TOY DOGS 

“Edited by Lady Helen Moorhouse.” 

Then, in smaller print, “An interesting article will 
be contributed every week by titled experts and own- 
ers of prize animals. The editress, Lady Helen Moor- 
house, a well-known exhibitor in British dog-shows, 
will open the series.” 

Anne turned the booklet over. On its outer cover 
of cream parchment was the gilded inscription, The 
Orb. 

“I never heard of it,” said she. 

“It’s a new paper, not out yet,” said Lady Helen. 
“It is to be edited nominally, I believe, by Princess 

Y- herself.” She turned over the pages, reading 

aloud. “ ‘Miniatures, edited by the Duchess of Souls- 
by.’ ‘Aeroplaning, edited by the Honorable Rufus 
Egerton.’ ‘Motoring, edited by Lord Fleet.’ ‘The 
Collector, edited by Lady Brookwood.’ ” 

“Good gracious,” said Anne. “You don’t mean to 
say that you are going to edit a whole page in the 
thing.” 

“Yes, I am,” replied Lady Helen, with considerable 
meekness. “I know it’s a frightfully snobbish affair, 
but then, dear, he’s paying me fifty guineas for my 


THE LURE 


ir 


first article and two hundred a year. All I have to do 
is to let my name stand on that page, and write the 
first article. He will really do all the editing, I mean 
the technical part.” 

“Who’s he?” asked Anne. 

“He? Oh, Huntly Goss,, of course. He started the 
idea. He sees thousands in it. And we’re all so hard 
up, we’re jumping at it like sheep, one after the other. 
Lord Fleet has a lot of money in it. So has young 
Carstairs. And, then, no one can refuse Mr. Goss, at 
least no woman I ever knew could. You must meet 
him, Anne, dear. Of course, you will now, that is, 
if you will only write this article for me. I’ll give 
you half the fifty pounds for it.” 

Anne flushed with excitement, and then hesitated. 

“Oh, Aunt Helen, But I don’t know anything about 
toy dogs.” 

“You silly child! I’ll tell you all I know. Mr. 
Goss has already sketched out roughly what he wants 
me to say. But, my dear, I never could spell properly, 
let alone punctuate, and I get so mixed up in the hor- 
rid thing, that I really don’t know where I am. I’ve 
written to Mr. Goss to know if I may get you to help 
me, and he said, ‘Certainly.’ So there’s nothing to 
prevent you. Do have some more tea?” 

Anne’s eyes shone. Perhaps help would come after 
all through that least expected channel, her aunt. 

“Have you got Mr. Goss’s notes, Aunt Helen, and 
what you have written?” 

“Here’s what I have written,” said her aunt, hand- 
ing over the crumpled pages in her lap. “I’m sure, 
Anne, that I’ve never respected people who write so 
much as at this minute. No, you’ve got the last page. 
There’s the first. I’m afraid you’ll think it terrible.” 

“How many thousand words does he want?” asked 
Anne, looking up. 


12 


THE LURE 


“You are clever, Anne! Do you know, I was so 
surprised when Mr. Goss said he wanted so many 
thousand words. I always thought writers went on 
till they wanted to stop when writing an article. Now, 
let me see, how many thousands of words did he want? 
— doesn’t it sound long? About three thousand, I 
believe. Or was it thirteen ? Something with a three. 
Oh, yes, it was three; here it is, in his letter. But I 
suppose if you wrote more he’d be grateful.” 

Anne laughed. 

“If he’s like most editors, he’d be very much an- 
noyed if we gave him too much. You see, it must 
just fill your page and not poach on any one else’s.” 

“That’s tiresome. One doesn’t count one’s sen- 
tences in speaking. I am glad you are going to do it 
for me.” 

“I’ll do it if I can said Anne, remembering Mrs. 
Courcy’s injunction, “Never say you can’t do any- 
thing.” “I’ll take it all back with me to-night and tell 
you to-morrow.” 

“Oh, but you will, Anne, won’t you? I shall be 
lost if you don’t. And besides, I do think getting into 
touch with Huntly Goss would be so useful to you. 
It’s such a load off my mind, dear. You sweet Chows, 
isn’t it nice of Cousin Anne to help your poor dis- 
tracted mumsie. You shall all have chicken-cream 
to-night, petsy dogs. And good gracious, Anne, it’s 
half -past five. We must get ready.” 

She swept herself and the dogs together off the 
sofa, and, putting her arm round Anne’s slim waist, 
took her into the pink-and-white bedroom. Her maid, 
summoned by a bell, came in attentively. 

“My long chinchilla coat, please*, Henriette. And 
the toque to go with it, I think. Why, Anne, you’ve 
taken off your hat! . . . Oh, yes, of course , I remem- 
ber! You were going to wear one of mine. Henri- 


THE LURE 


13 

ette, what hat do you think would suit Miss Moor- 
house ?” 

Henriette looked at Anne with a professional eye. 

“That deep tomato turban, with the black plumes, 
madame, I think. It would suit mademoiselle’s black 
costume.” 

“Yes, lovely!” agreed Lady Helen. The maid ar- 
ranged the turban deftly, pulling at Anne’s hair with 
gentle and clever fingers to loosen it over her ears. 
“It suits you twenty times better than me, Anne. 
Where’s the hare’s foot, Henriette, I am shockingly 
pale. . . . My dear child, you must keep that hat; 
I shall never like myself in it again. You should al- 
ways wear good hats ; they make all the difference be- 
tween mediocre and good looks. I’ll give you the 
address of my milliner, and tell her to give you very 
special prices. I dare say she’d make you a little toque 
for three or four guineas. How are your gloves ? Oh, 
give mademoiselle a pair out of the glove-box, Henri- 
ette.” 

“Mademoiselle looks charming,” said Henriette. 

“Anne, you’d be a beauty if you’d only dress up to 
your eyes. Do tell me, is there too much powder on 
this side of my nose? No? Well, do rub a little off, 
Henriette. Yes, Wilkins, I’m coming.” 

Anne wrestled with her aunt’s array of unpepton- 
ised facts till midnight. With the aid of one or two 
books which she had borrowed from the library, she 
thought she could write a tolerable article. Huntly 
Goss’s suggestions, in a clear small hand, helped her 
enormously. She went to bed in a state of excite- 
ment. It had been a very lucky day, she thought — a 
hat, a pair of gloves, a possible £25 and a promise of 
a useful introduction. True, the promise came from 
her Aunt Helen, and as such had to be largely dis- 


14 


THE LURE 


counted, but, strive as she would to stifle her hopes 
by past experience, they bubbled up anew in an irre- 
pressible way, for Anne was young. She tossed from 
side to side on the lumpy mattress, thinking of possi- 
bilities, of thfe article, of the Orb , of the Chows, of 
anything that kept her restless mind from losing con- 
sciousness until the thoughts merged into dreams. 

On the morrow she awoke with a vague feeling that 
something pleasant had happened, which crystallized 
into a remembrance of yesterday. She dressed quickly, 
and, reaching the dining-room in time for the half- 
past-seven breakfast provided for those who were 
obliged to leave the house early, she got to work by 
half-past eight. Her pen raced over the paper. All 
the tangled sentences of the night before seemed al- 
ready unravelled, as though a fairy godmother had 
been at work in her brain during the night. She 
wrote the last word before eleven, and, flushed with 
her achievement, put on the new hat and sallied out to 
catch a bus. 

“That hat does suit you, Miss Moorhouse. You 
look quite saucy,” said Mrs. Lumley, over the stairs. 
She had only just emerged from her scented bedroom, 
many auburn puffs and curls pinned around her flam- 
boyant head. “Got any luck, my dear?” 

“I hope I may soon, Mrs. Lumley,” Anne replied. 

“That’s right.” 

Anne went out into the chilly street. A fine rain 
was falling, and she almost regretted her hat. But 
it soon stopped, and she got into the ill-smelling Tot- 
tenham Court Road bus, full of draggle-skirted wom- 
en, her packet of manuscript in her lap. 

To her disappointment, her aunt was out when she 
arrived, and all that Anne could gather was that Lady 
Helen had taken the Chows with her in the motor at 
eleven, and was expected back for lunch. 


THE LURE 


15 

Anne waited, therefore, impatiently. Her aunt ar- 
rived at a quarter-past one, just as the girl had given 
up hope. 

“Good child, you've come to lunch. . . . What, 
you haven't finished that dreadful article already! 
Really, Anne, you’re wonderful! I’m sure it’s splen- 
did. Come in and eat something first . . . and then 
you must read it to me. I’ve got nothing to eat, I’m 
afraid; only a little chicken aspic, and some sweet 
stuff and a mouthful of soup. You know I eat noth- 
ing. Really, if it weren’t for the Chows, who really 
do eat, I shouldn’t dare to have the butcher call at 
the house.” 

She did tolerable credit to the excellent cold lunch- 
eon, nevertheless, and scarcely stopped talking for a 
moment. 

“I know; I will have Wilkins ring up Mr. Goss at 
once, and tell him you'll bring the article to him this 
afternoon.” 

“But, Aunt Helen, you haven't seen it yet; how 
do you know that it will do?” 

“Of course, it is lovely, darling. I have such abso- 
lute confidence in you. And if it doesn’t do — why, 
nothing I can provide will ever. . . . Ring up Mr. 
Goss at his office, Wilkins; no — he’ll be lunching, at 
his house ; no, at his club, and tell him that Miss Moor- 
house will call in this afternoon and bring the article 
I promised. He’ll understand. You will find all the 
numbers together beside his name.” 

Wilkins retreated to use discretion, and the tele- 
phone. 

He returned, just as Lady Helen was attacking an 
orange, to report — 

“Mr. Goss was hout, my lady, at his house, his 
hoffice, and the club.” 

“What a bother. Well, ring up the office again, 


THE LURE 


1 6 

and tell his secretary, or clerk, or whoever it is, to ask 
him to ring me up as soon as he gets in. He is such 
a dear, Anne, you’ll fall in love with him ; all women 
do. ... I do think oranges ought to be banished from 
polite tables ; they are so difficult to eat tidily. I like 
them cut in two, with Maraschino in the middle. . . . 
What was I saying? Oh, about Huntly Goss. Men 
never like him much — jealousy, I should think. Then 
men are so helpless about other men. Say to one man 
you think another is good-looking, he’ll always reply 
that the other is rather a conceited ass. And yet they 
say that women can’t see prettiness in other women! 
Why, I rave about Lily Elsie, and I always say so 
every time I go to Daly’s or wherever it is that she is 
acting. ... I wonder if they’ve remembered the poor 
darling Chows and their little lunchikins. Wilkins, 
have they? Oh, that is right. They got drefful hun- 
gy after their airing this morning. I’ve promised 
Mr. Goss that photo of Yum-Yum and her puppies we 
had taken last spring. Do you remember, Anne?” 

“I don’t think I ever saw it.” 

“You shall see it at once, then. We’ll have coffee 
in my little cosy room upstairs.” 

“Mr. Goss at the telephone, my lady,” announced 
Wilkins, three-quarters of an hour later, when Anne 
had just laid down the manuscript of the article she 
had been reading aloud to her aunt. 

“I’ll go down immediately.” Lady Helen scattered 
the Chows and went down the stairs lightly. When 
she returned, she was all smiles; her gray eyes joyous 
and exultant. 

“I’ve told him all about you, dearest ; how cleverly 
you’ve helped me, and how much you’ve written, and 
he says he’ll be charmed to see you at four in his office. 
I shall ask him to dinner soon again. You’d better 


THE LURE 


17 


let Henriette do your hair first; I’m sure that Goss 
is fastidious and noticing about women, and Henriette 
does know how to suit you.” 

Anne permitted herself to be “arranged” and soon 
afterwards stepped into her aunt’s motor. She felt 
nervous and shy. Divested of Lady Helen’s baroque 
descriptions, this man was nothing more nor less than 
an editor, a man of business, a person who would 
judge her on her own untried merits, and Anne’s be- 
lief in her own powers had somewhat declined since 
she had been engaged in mounting stairs in Fleet 
Street. 


CHAPTER III 


T HE offices of the Orb were in somewhat unusual 
quarters — Brooke Street. They were on the 
first floor. In the outer office three pretty 
girls were taking tea in an atmosphere of fresh white- 
and-gold paint, and eau-de-Cologne. A brand-new 
Remington typewriter stood in one corner of the room. 
There was nothing suggestive of journalism except 
a waste-paper basket brimming to the full. One of 
the girls rose languidly as Anne entered. 

“Mr. Goss? What name shall I say, please ?” 
“Miss Moorhouse.” 

“Have you an appointment ?” 

“At four.” 

The girl disappeared, to re-issue from the inner 
rooms a moment later with — 

“Mr. Goss is very sorry, but would you be kind 
enough to wait for a few moments ? The Duchess of 
Soulsby had an appointment at half-past three, and 
she is still with Mr. Goss.” 

She led the way into the first of the sancta beyond. 
It was more like a room in Lady Helen’s house than 
an office. The furniture was Chippendale. Prints 
hung on the wall, a vase full of fresh roses, in spite 
of the season, was set on the upholstered window-seat, 
and a fire blazed in the fire-place. A few leather and 
parchment-bound volumes lay about on the table, to- 
gether with the latest magazines. 

Anne began to think she must have made a mistake. 
18 


THE LURE 


19 

The occasional sound of a typewriter in the next room 
reassured her. 

Ten minutes later an inner door opened, and a tall, 
elderly woman in a long sable coat came out, followed 
by a man in a gray lounge suit of conspicuously per- 
fect fit and taste. The Duchess was still uttering the 
trailing end of a sentence, in somewhat of a bazaar- 
opening voice — 

“And if you assure her that the charity will benefit 
and that it will involve no personal expense to herself, 
I am sure she will help you. Good- bye, Mr. Goss; 
please do not come any further. I see you have some 
one waiting.” 

“But allow me to accompany you ” 

“No, no ; I won’t hear of it. Good- bye, Mr. Goss. 
Till Thursday, then.” 

She graciously and importantly, with a consciously 
kindly smile on the outer office, descended the stairs. 

“Good Lord,” murmured Mr. Goss looking after 
her*“and that woman’s grandfather sold canned pork 
in Chicago!” 

He gazed after her as one gazes after a comet; 
then, turning suddenly, caught sight of Miss Moor- 
house. At the same time Anne saw him for the first 
time. 

Huntly Goss as a youth had been an Adonis, a 
Narcissus. He had been of that purely Greek type 
of masculine beauty which one never sees in modern 
Athens, but sometimes in London or New York, with 
variations by George Alexander and Dana Gibson. 
Now, at forty, the Hyperion curls crisp around the 
brow had got thin and a little gray, the pure curve of 
the chin was more theatrical and heavy, there were 
slight wrinkles about the eyes, lines from nose to 
mouth; but, nevertheless, he was the type which 
women crowd to see at matinees. 


20 


THE LURE 


“Miss Moorhouse? I’m very sorry to have kept 
you waiting. But the Duchess was late. Will you 
come into my private room?” 

He led the way into the room beyond. If the wait- 
ing-room had impressed Anne, Mr. Goss’s office took 
her breath away. Original William Nicholsons hung 
on the walls, the desk was a beautiful piece of Shera- 
ton inlaid marquetry, china which a glance told her 
was priceless was ranged on the wide shelf above the 
fire-place and in a Sheraton cabinet, and a huge white 
bearskin lay before the fire. There were flowers in 
profusion. 

Goss pulled forward an easy-chair and sat himself 
at the bureau, which was placed sideways to catch the 
light, in such a way that he faced the girl. His atti- 
tude was easy yet courteous, his eyes were fixed on 
her intently, in a manner that she felt rather than per- 
ceived to be slightly personal, as if he were appraising 
her from another standard than those to which she 
was accustomed. 

“You have brought me your aunt’s manuscript, 
Miss Moorhouse?” 

“Yes,” said Anne, with a slight heightening of col- 
or. “It is here.” 

She produced it. 

Goss looked at a page of it in a slightly supercilious 
way. 

“Hm — yes. . . . Yes, I shall run through this later 
on. . . . Your aunt is an old friend, Miss Moor- 
house.” 

“So she tells me,” said Anne. 

Goss took up a paper-knife. 

“Did she tell you of this scheme of ours?” 

“A little.” 

“I supposed she showed you — this.” 

He produced the white-and-gold dummy. 


THE LURE 


21 


“Do you like the headpieces and tailpieces? All 
the work of Beggarstaff. You remember that exhi- 
bition of his work in the Goupil Galleries last winter 
that everyone went to? He designed these specially 
for the Orb. The paper is good. Handmade. Do 
you like it? ... To tell the truth, Miss Moorhouse, 
I am sick of shoddiness. Everything is shoddy now, 
jerry-built, superficial, mean. Lloyd Georgism is ram- 
pant. We live and move on a three-farthing basis. 
We take the middle-class ideal. There is to be nothing 
shoddy about the Orb. It is to be beautiful, beautiful 
in everything. It is to breathe of luxury and spacious- 
ness; not the luxury of the tasteless brew or the spa- 
ciousness of a vulgar White City, but the Epicurean 
luxury of restraint and taste. The best of everything 
is not easy to find, but I mean to find it. You see 
these offices — they are symbolical. There is to be no 
inharmonious note. Even my office-boys are to have 
clean finger-nails and no adenoids. . . .” 

He turned over the pages with light, well-manicured 
fingers. 

“ ‘Flowers and Flower Culture/ by the Countess 

of B , with a pale border of colored flowers like 

a Japanese print — mere dreams of roses, you see, so 
faint that they do not alarm the eye. Here is a splen- 
did page, ‘The Turf/ by Lord Rundle. Think how 
that will be read! Lord Rundle’s name is as synon- 
ymous with the turf as the words Derby and New- 
market. What do you think of it?” 

“The get-up is wonderful,” said Anne, cautiously. 

“But ” She hesitated, thinking of her aunt. “I 

suppose the contributions will be up to the standard 
of general perfection.” 

He smiled, and she saw by the instantaneous flash 
of humor that he understood her. 

“I don’t think we shall permit anything to go in 


22 


THE LURE 


which falls short of our ideal. You know the 
motto of the Orb , ‘Written by the Aristocracy for 
the Aristocracy/ I imagine that you think the 
first part may endanger the literary value of our 
enterprise.” 

“It did occur to me,” said Anne, with an honest 
twinkle in her brown eyes. 

He bent forward, breezily confidential, smiling. 

“The truth is, Miss Moorhouse, that the prosperity 
of the paper is to be based upon our grand national 
snobbery. / don’t sneer at snobs. On the contrary, I 
think a country without snobs would be decadent. The 
Romans at their most flourishing period were snobs. 
The Athenians were not, and the result was that as 
soon as they got into a tight place in the struggle of 
the nations, they went smash like a pricked bubble. A 
frothy people. Take my word for it, snobs are the 
backbone of any country. Your snob is a bulwark. 
He has money in his pocket, or, if he hasn’t, he spends 
other people’s. The snob in the street is going to 
take in the Orb ” 

Anne looked a little doubtful. 

“But my aunt said it wouldn’t be publicly circula- 
ted. She said it wouldn’t be on the bookstalls even. 
That it would only be sent to subscribers.” 

He looked cryptic, and smoothed his blotting-pad 
with a caressing gesture. 

“That is what could be hoped, Miss Moorhouse. To 
you, who see with so practical an eye, I may admit 
that it is — well, a hope. It sounds well. In any case, 
the magazine will cost half-a-crown.” 

Anne thought of the enormous cost of production. 
Her curriculum at the College had not been in vain. 

“You are relying on the advertisements to make it 
pay, I suppose,” she suggested, shyly. 

He gave her a keen look. 


THE LURE 


23 


“We shall have no advertisements — we hope/’ he 
replied. “With a member of the royal family as edi- 
tor, it would be scarcely seemly.” 

So this was what squeamish duchesses were told! 
Anne was a little puzzled. She could not make out 
how much Mr. Goss was posing, and how much was 
genuine. 

“Your aunt tells me that you have a good deal of 
journalistic experience,” he continued. 

“I haven’t very much. I have had a few stories 
and articles published. I have learnt to edit. And I 
am looking for work now.” 

“Learnt to edit?” 

“At the College of Journalism.” 

“I never heard of it. . . . So you can edit. . . . 
Can you rewrite? Pull a thing into decent form? 
Of course, I have your aunt’s article here, but I don’t 
know what it was like to start with, or how much is 
you and how much your aunt. Now, I’ve another ar- 
ticle in this drawer — by some one I’ll call Lady X 

her name is not on the MS. It’s bosh — the rankest 
stuff I ever read. It will have to be re-written com- 
pletely. Such a pity. That woman has been over the 
world with her husband and lived in Tibet, and yet 
the article is pitiable. I should like to see what you 
can do with it. The raw material’s in the article. You 
must be dignified — she’s slangy; you must be literary 
— she’s ungrammatical; you must be mighty pictur- 
esque — she’s dull to tears. Would you care to go into 
the other room and try your hand on it now?” 

“How long do you give me?” 

He looked at his watch. “Till I get back to the 
office, which will be about six, as we close then. You 
can have a stenographer if you like.” 

“I’ll try,” said Anne, with a sinking of the heart 
at her own temerity. 


24 


THE LURE 


He hunted in a drawer, produced the manuscript 
and handed it to her. 

‘That’s right. You’re plucky. I admire pluckiness 
in women. Now you’ll have some tea — I’ll have some 
sent in to you and you shall not be disturbed. I am 
due in Dover Street already, so I must leave you. I 
shall see you again, so I won’t say good-bye. . . 

His eyes, which had been impersonal and absorbed, 
suddenly concentrated themselves on hers again. They 
had the power to make her feel slightly shy. She 
read, against her will, that he approved of her per- 
sonal appearance. It was that turban she supposed. 

“Neither will I,” she said, rising, “but will get to 
work at once.” 

He left her seated in the waiting-room with a tray- 
ful of dainty cakes and a pot of China tea. Even the 
tea-set they used in the office was of eggshell china. 
Anne almost expected the pen that was brought her 
to have a silver handle, but it was an ordinary wooden- 
handled pen; though the office-paper, she noted, was 
of the thickest cream parchment, with The Orb 
stamped upon it in gold. 

The office-boy (with clean finger-nails and no ade- 
noids) attended to her wants and left her, after ascer- 
taining in polite accents that she had no further need 
of him. 

Goss did not return until half-past six. Everyone 
but the seraphic office-boy had left. The pretty girls 
in the outer office came in one by one to see if Miss 
Moorhouse were remaining. She noted that their out- 
door garments were far beyond her income, and won- 
dered how much Mr. Goss paid his stenographers. 
Perhaps they were duchesses in disguise. She dubbed 
the dark one “Duchess Patricia” and the fair one 
“Countess Beatrice” on the spot. The office-boy 
should be “Sir Percival.” Whether the other gor- 


THE LURE 


25 

geously attired young men who had drifted through 
the room as she sat there were attached to the staff or 
were contributing dukes and marquises, she did not 
know. They looked fresh from clubs in Piccadilly. 

When Goss returned, he found Anne putting her 
sheets together. 

“Are you still here, Miss Moorhouse. How good 
of you ! I must apologize for being so late. I thought 
you would have gone and given me up long ago. . . . 
Is the article ready?” 

“I had to get it done. I’ve just written the last 
sentence. And Sir Perci — I mean the little office-boy 
with clean nails — told me he had to stay to keep the 
office open, so I stayed, too.” 

Her eyes were shining with excitement. 

“Splendid, Miss Moorhouse. You’re enthusiastic. 
I love enthusiasm in women and in any one I work 
with. I’m enthusiastic. Come along to my room. 
We’ll read it. You shall read it to me. I’m not keep- 
ing you from dinner? No? Good. Jimmy, you can 
go home. Here’s sixpence to get some chocolates 
with. And, by the bye, you’d better bring a clean col- 
lar with you every day if you can’t keep one cleaner 
than that. Uncleanliness is revolting.” 

“Yessir.” 

“That’s right, James; you may go.” 

“That’s a nice kiddy,” said Goss, going into his 
private office and turning on the electric light. 
“Where’ll you sit, Miss Moorhouse? I interviewed 
about a hundred boys. I was resolved to find one 
with the necessary appearance and behavior. James 
pleased me. He has no humor. And he is a snob, a 
delicious snob. There’s the making of a prime min- 
ister in Jimmy.” 

“He’s a very pretty boy.” 

“I can’t bear anything in my neighborhood that 


2 6 THE LURE 

offends me by ugliness. You may have noticed my 
stenographers.” 

Anne subdued a smile. “They are good-looking,” 
she admitted. 

“And my private secretary, Dunoers? He must 
have gone through the room where you were writing 
several times. A head for a sculptor. He is a Har- 
rovian. I had some difficulty in finding him, but I 
did find him. He has useful relations, incidentally — 
Lord Watchham is his uncle by marriage. I wanted 
Lord Watchham on my list of subscribers. The list 
will be printed next month. Now — Miss Moorhouse 
— the article! You are comfortable? Another cush- 
ion? So.” 

He had a school-boy way of chatting on, in spite 
of his enormous pose, that amused Anne. His ego- 
tism was at once so superb and so insistent that it 
amounted to vitality. And then she was unconscious- 
ly biased by his good looks. He was amazingly pleas- 
ant to behold. Anne was only a girl, and had the 
Moorhouse susceptibility to the verdict of the eye. 

She began, with considerable shyness, to read her 
manuscript aloud; blushing here and there as she 
scored a point. She dared not look up until she had 
finished, though she knew that he was watching her 
intently. 

When she had read the last sentence, there was a 
pause. She looked up with some misgiving. He was 
smoking a cigarette, and contemplating her coolly. 

“You are wondering what I shall say?” he replied 
in amused answer to her questioning eyes. “Well, I 
was just wondering what salary I could offer to induce 
you to come on my staff.” 

“You — you don’t mean it?” 

“Of course, I mean it. I think you must name your 
own salary.” 


THE LURE 


27 


Anne looked absolutely blank. 

“I haven’t the vaguest idea,” she said. She remem- 
bered the salaries which had been offered in the case 
of those vacant posts she had attempted to secure. 
They were on an average two or three pounds a week. 
But they were intended to recompense experienced 
jonmalists. 

“How about — two and a half pounds a week?” she 
suggested, as he pressed her to speak. She almost 
expected him to say, “Ridiculous.” 

“You have a private income? You live at home, or 
with your aunt?” 

“No — to all questions. I live in a boarding-house.” 

“Well, my dear child, how can you dress on that? 
Forgive me, I know what it costs for a woman to look 
nice. I want you to do yourself and the Orb credit.” 

“Yes,” murmured Anne, a little stiffly. 

“Well, then, I suggest four guineas a week. Don’t 
look surprised. There’ll be plenty of hard work, and 
I shall need all the brains you’ve got — and you have 
plenty under that pretty hat. I want Ideas. I want 
plenty of Ideas. I want enthusiasm. Plenty of enthu- 
siasm. I want vitality put into your work. I don’t 
ask you only to think of the Orb in office hours, but 
when you are away from Brooke Street, when you are 
eating, when you are in bed. I want what is most 
brilliant in you. And I want you to work up your 
aunt and everyone with whom you come in contact into 
a fever-pitch of enthusiasm about it. Great causes 
are won through great efforts, and not through the 
efforts of one person, but of many. Your aunt has 
lots of friends, friends who are of the type who will 
make the Orb . You must throw your heart and soul 
into the cause. . . . We will make it a fortnight’s 
trial to begin with to see how you get on. That will 
be best, won’t it?” 


28 


THE LURE 


“Yes,” said Anne. 

“And to-night you can begin to use your invention 
for me. I have three empty pages. I want an Idea — 
a selling, attractive Idea — an Idea in harmony with 
the scheme of the Orb: to fill each one. Bring me 
suggestions. Lots of suggestions. I am sure your 
brain is fertile.” 

“Do you want a really snobbish Idea?” asked Anne, 
with some malice. 

“Snobbish without being obvious. Snobbish in the 
grand sense. The British sense of humor is small as 
to what touches public life and public people and pub- 
lic institutions. What other nations could carry out 
a coronation as we have done? The Gallic sense of 
humor would not permit it. The American newspa- 
pers would never rise to the heights of bombastic plat- 
itude which our newspapers ascend when discussing 
the royal family. And yet the public that will stand 
all that sometimes develops a sense of humor. Mind 
you, I am not deprecating the majestic and simple pom- 
posity of the British snob. On the other hand, I think 
it is a glorious sign of national vitality. The day upon 
which England loses her big bump of reverence will 
be the day of her downfall.” 

“I don’t like you to sneer at the English,” said Anne, 
with some warmth. “Surely there is a large majority 
of sensible people who take the bombast for what it is 
worth? I hate to hear anyone run down his own 
country.” 

He smiled, tolerantly. 

“You are patriotic, and I like patriotism in women. 
But you don’t understand me — I am not using the 
term snob in disparagement at all. . . . But, I have 
been talking on interminably and it’s half-past seven. 
How about dinner?” 

“I must go. I shall be late.” 


THE LURE 


29 


“Better dine with me, unobtrusively, somewhere. 
The grill-room at the Trocadero, for instance. I can’t 
let you go back to a cold dinner. I know what these 
boarding-houses are.” 

Anne hesitated a second. Her ignorance of the con- 
ventions that should exist between the manager of a 
paper and a member of its staff was vague enough, 
but she wondered if it were quite right. But Goss 
asked her as a matter of fact. 

She accepted in the same spirit, remembering Mrs. 
Courcy’s maxim: “Never let a man remember that 
you’re a woman when you’re working with him.” 

“Thank you, I’d like to,” she said. 

“All right then, come along. We’ll get a taxi and 
go straight there.” 


CHAPTER IV 


A NNE was driven home by Goss in a taxi-cab. 
The man puzzled her. He was the oddest mix- 
ture of sincerity and insincerity, of pose and 
impulse, that she had ever met. Brilliant he certainly 
was and his looks must please. Enthusiastic as a boy, 
his dispassionate cynicism on the other side almost 
disgusted her. But his appeal to her whole-hearted 
energy and sympathies found a ready response in her 
youth. He had made her a sporting offer ; she would 
respond in a sporting spirit. 

All through dinner he had been in his most charm- 
ing mood. He somehow conveyed a flattering impres- 
sion rather than expressed compliments. It was im- 
possible not to feel that he had met her in a spirit of 
special confidence; he, the great man, the originator 
of a great scheme taken up by great people. Coming 
under his influence, she forgot the musical comedy ele- 
ment in the concern which had first struck her. 

She wrote the good news to Tony, who always pro- 
fessed himself to be disgusted at the fact that his sis- 
ter was earning her living, but found no solution of 
the problem as to how she was to live if she did not 
work. 

Tony must evidently have thought of his sister at 
precisely the same moment, for a letter with the Aider- 
shot postmark lay beside her plate the next morning. 
Tony never indulged in lengthy correspondence. In 
this letter he merely stated that he was very fit but 
frightfully hard up, or he should have run up to town 
30 


THE LURE 


3i 


and taken her out to a theatre. He informed her fur- 
ther that her aunt had asked him to turn up at a dance 
at the Burlingham next week and bring some dancing- 
men, so he supposed he should see Anne then. Things 
had been pretty rotten with him lately, and he had the 
worst luck of any one he knew. 

Anne sighed. Tony was an anxiety to her. He 
had always been in trouble of one kind or another 
ever since she could remember — and not very reputa- 
ble kind of trouble, even for a mischievous boy. 
There was that scandal, hushed up with difficulty, 
about a laborer’s daughter on the estate when he was 
sixteen. There was the time when he had been threat- 
ened with expulsion from school, when he was in the 
upper sixth, too, for drunkenness and rowdyism. 
There had been something else afterwards at Sand- 
hurst of which Anne had never had a correct version. 
She remembered that her father had been worried 
about it, that he had journeyed to and fro twice, and 
had damned his only son in no measured terms, with- 
out vouchsafing any explanation to his daughter. 

Yet Tony achieved popularity by his easy good com- 
radeship, and his willingness to oblige his friends at 
any cost to himself. Anne’s love for her brother was 
more than half motherly. 

If only fate had so ordained that she could have 
been constantly at his side, to guard him from him- 
self and keep him under the influences which were 
friendly instead of inimical to his best interests! 

A note from Lady Helen, enclosing a printed card, 
said — 

“I quite forgot to give you an invitation to my 
little dance next week. Come looking your nicest. 

“Your devoted 

“Aunt Helen.” 


32 


THE LURE 


Anne set off directly her breakfast was eaten, to the 
office. The “duchess,” whose real name proved to be 
Miss Minns, and the “countess,” whose real name was 
Dallas, were already there, and Jimmy handed her a 
note scrawled in pencil “Please run again through your 
aunt’s article and shorten it. I find it is a little too 
long. H. G .” 

The article accompanied the note, and the office- 
boy took her into a small room which she had not 
entered before. It was furnished more plainly than 
the others, for which she felt thankful. 

“Is Mr. Goss here, then, Jimmy?” she inquired. 

“Yes, miss; he got here at quarter to nine this 
morning,” replied that adenoidless youth. “He’s al- 
ways early, he is. We’ve got to be here by nine every 
morning, but Mr. Wright and the rest of ’em gets 
here by ten. He said he expected you’d be here soon 
after nine, and so you was.” 

“Who’s Mr. Wright?” 

“The advertisement manager, miss.” 

“But there aren’t to be any ” Anne began, in- 

voluntarily, then checked herself. 

She did not waste time in surmises, but set to work. 
Soon she discovered that she was not to be alone. A 
tall young man entered at five minutes to ten, gave a 
slightly inquiring glance in her direction, and opened 
a roll-top desk, first removing his suede gloves. 

Anne noticed his gray silk socks. 

“Excuse me, but are you on the staff?” he began, 
after some five minutes of silence. 

“Yes,” said Anne, diffidently. 

“Don’t you think me curious, but I thought perhaps 
you were. You see, someone joined last Monday and 
left at the end of the week, and someone else the 
week before and left.” 

“Good gracious,” said Anne, with sudden misgiv- 


THE LURE 


33 


ing\ “perhaps I shall leave at the end of a week, too. ,, 

“I hope not,’’ returned the young man, politely. 
“My name is Wright. I’m the advertisement mana- 
ger.” 

“I’m Miss Moorhouse.” 

“Have you ever been on a paper before?” 

“Well, no; not exactly.” 

“Neither had the other two,” he said, with a touch 
of gloom. He opened letters for some moments. 

“And have you ever been advertisement manager 
before?” inquired Anne, cheekily. 

“Not manager. But I do know my job. I’m not 
an amateur at it.” 

His melancholy tone implied that everyone else in 
the office was. 

“Neither am I,” retorted Anne, haughtily. “I have 
written a great deal.” 

It stretched the truth, but she felt that the occasion 
demanded it. 

“I am glad of that,” he said. “The first of your 
predecessors wore a title. She was always asking me 
how to spell words. The other Goss engaged on the 
strength of her hat, I believe. He told me so after- 
wards. It makes one depressed to have so many 
changes. As soon as one gets accustomed to a per- 
son — they leave,” he concluded, ungrammatically. 

That the young man was embittered, Anne could 
see. She changed the subject. 

“Mr. Goss told me that there were to be no adver- 
tisements.” 

“Did he?” Mr. Wright replied, with some sarcasm. 
“Well, you see me here. I suppose he told you the 
magazine wouldn’t be put on the stalls?” 

“Yes.” 

Mr. Wright smiled. 

The office-boy re-entered. 


34 


THE LURE 


“Mr. Goss would like to see you, Mr. Wright.” 

Mr. Wright rose leisurely, collected his correspond- 
ence, and walked out of the room, throwing a friendly 
glance backward at Miss Moorhouse. 

Presently he returned, obviously in a bad temper, 
called in a stenographer, and dictated some letters, 
first inquiring briefly if the process would be likely 
to disturb Miss Moorhouse. 

So Goss’s high and mighty disclaimer of any inten- 
tion to advertise was mere bluff ! Why, when he had 
disclosed so much to her, had he thought it necessary 
to hoodwink her in a manner that she must discover 
as soon as she entered the office? 

She was set to work again by the advent of some 
papers from some unseen individual, which on exam- 
ination proved to be letters containing gossip about 
certain eminent people. A note bade her “sift out the 
scandal and the servants’ hall stuff, and make what 
material there was left in the communication into a 
thousand words of 'fill-up.’ ” 

Mr. Wright soon left her alone, departing on er- 
rands of his own, and Anne found that it was lunch- 
time. That there was a general exodus she heard 
from the opening and shutting of doors, and she her- 
self rose and began to pin on her hat before the mirror. 
Suppose Goss had engaged her on the strength of the 
tomato turban! What an awful thought! Mr. 
Wright’s pessimism had sunk into her soul : she felt 
as depressed as she had felt elated earlier in the 
day. Was Goss a literary Bluebeard who discharged 
his employees in the callous way of the Arabian 
tyrant ? 

Goss himself put his head round the door a few 
moments later. 

“You there, Miss Moorhouse? I’m sorry to have 
to put you into a room with someone else, but the 


THE LURE 35 

fact is that our accommodation is very limited. Have 
you got on well?” 

“Yes, thank you.” 

“And the suggestions for the pages?” 

“I have them here.” 

He came in and took them from her, and folded 
them carefully. “HI take them out with me. Have 
to lunch with some people, but I’ll look this through 
in an odd moment. Au revoir.” 

He pocketed the document and rushed out of the 
room to encounter a woman in the doorway. 

“Good God, how late you are, Lucy,” was his 
greeting. 

“I couldn’t help it, Huntly,” returned the visitor. 
She was a good-looking, faded woman in the thirties, 
with golden hair that suggested art rather than nature, 
and long ear-rings. Her hat was large, and the face 
beneath it somewhat drawn, as with perpetual ill- 
temper or endurance of petty disagreeables. 

Goss checked himself on the eve of leaving the room 
to introduce her. 

“My wife, Miss Moorhouse. Miss Moorhouse, who 
has just joined the staff of the Orb” 

Mrs. Goss gave her a searching glance and shook 
hands in a listless way, uttering a commonplace. Then 
she turned to her husband. 

“Well, if we’re late, you’d better have a taxi called 
at once, hadn’t you?” 

“One has been waiting for about a quarter of an 
hour,” said Goss. “Good-bye, Miss Moorhouse.” 

“Good-bye,” echoed the wife, with little interest 
in her voice, but a flash of it in her fine eyes. She 
reminded Anne of someone on the stage; of whom 
she could not tell. There was something which sug- 
gested the theatrical profession about Mrs. Goss. 

Anne’s first day ended without much further event. 


THE LURE 


She complained to Mr. Wright that she had not 
enough to do, to which that young man replied that 
to look for work was to look for trouble, and plenty 
would come her way sooner or later, if the paper ever 
was brought out. 

“But it’s to be out on the first of May,” said Anne; 
“it says so in the dummy circular.” 

“It might be the first of April more appropriately,” 
said Mr. Wright. “I shall believe the paper’s out 
when I see it about, but not before.” He became more 
confidential. “I never was in such a harebrained con- 
cern before, Miss Moorhouse. It’s all froth and bluff, 
and to talk business or common sense to Goss is about 
as repaying as talking mathematics to a windmill. And 
yet he’s clever; you can never tell whether he hasn’t 
some good practical scheme beneath all this high-fal- 
utin rubbish. And they have paid up my salary all 
right, so far. But that he should try to gammon me, 
riles me. I’m not a duke ; I’m not a lord. I’m not a 
fool, either. And he often adopts what you say after 
he’s pooh-poohed it flat.” 

“Perhaps he is a little trying to work with,” said 
Anne, sorry for this young man so obviously out of 
his element, in spite of the suede gloves. 

“It’s all this swank that I hate,” said Mr. Wright, 
in a tone which was a revolt against the Debrett-cum- 
Burke atmosphere of the Orb. “It’s insulting to any 
one’s intelligence.” 


CHAPTER V 


A NNE watched the couples revolving down the 
parquet flooring of the big dancing-room of 
the Burlingham. The young man beside her, 
a subaltern of the name of Worthington, was telling 
her about a polo pony he had bought, and she was 
being sympathetic about it. She had known him since 
Tony and he were at school together, and still called 
him Piggy, which nickname had been bestowed upon 
him in early youth. 

“ Tony’s flirting outrageously with that damsel in 
pink,” said Piggy, breaking off. 

“Or thinks he is,” replied Anne, with sisterly can- 
dor. To a sister the idea of anything as unromantic 
as a brother engaged in sentiment is sheerly ridiculous. 

“It’s the same thing,” said Piggy; “if you thought 
you were flirting with me this minute, you would be.” 
“Never, Piggy. It’s the thought that’s impossible.” 
“It wouldn’t be impossible to me, Anne. You look 
ripping to-night.” 

“Do I?” she answered, sarcastically. “Bones and 
all?” 

“Yes, in spite of the bone-shop. I wish you’d al- 
ways do your wig like that.” 

“I didn’t. Aunt Helen’s maid did it.” 

“Well, it suits you jolly well. I say, though, Anne, 
if you won’t think me frightfully interfering, I’d like 
to say something to you.” 

“Say on.” 

“You won’t think I’m a beast?” 

37 


38 THE LURE 

“Honest Injun, I won’t. You’re not ever a beast. 

Piggy” 

“Well, I wish you’d drop a hint to Tony to slacken 
up a bit. He thinks an awful amount of you and what 
you say. If I say anything, he tells me to shut up.” 

Anne’s face grew grave. 

“Is it bills?” 

“I expect there are some,” replied the young man, 
unwillingly, his face flushing. 

“Girls?” asked Anne, anxiously, her mind going 
over the past. 

“Anne, I’d rather not say anything. Only you can 
drop him a hint which he might follow. He wouldn’t 
take it from me. I’m fond of Tony, even when he 
does behave like an ass, and I don’t want to see him 
get into a mess.” 

“You’re rather a dear, Piggy. I’ll do it. Oh, I 
do wish Tony were more sensible.” 

“He’ll grow out of it,” said Piggy, with the wis- 
dom of twenty-one. 

“I hope so,” said Anne, despondently. 

“Don’t you worry. I feel a brute already for having 
said anything.” 

“Indeed you ’re not.” 

“If only he got shifted right out of England,” said 
Piggy, “it might be the making of old Tony.” 

The band had just stopped, and Tony and his part- 
ner walked past on their way to a cool retreat. Lady 
Helen came forward, however, to introduce the girl 
to someone else, and Tony, finding himself one of an 
indissoluble group, came to where his sister was sit- 
ting. 

“Lazy girl. You sat it out. You’ll get fat, Anne.’* 

Anne was always being teased about her leanness. 

“I didn’t; Piggy and I danced strenuously most of 
the time.” 


THE LURE 


39 


She made room for her brother on the settee. 

“Are you dancing the next?” she asked him. 

“Eve got Aunt Helen down, but she’s hopeless. I 
say, Anne, who’s that barber’s-block ass she was fuss- 
ing over ?” 

“Tony, that girl in pink told you she thought him 
good-looking ; that’s why you speak in that disgusted 
way.” 

“If she did, it wouldn’t affect my judgment.” 

“Well, the barber’s block, as you call him, is the 
editor of the Orb .” 

“Your boss?” 

“Exactly. Mr. Goss.” 

“Goss? What Goss?” 

“Huntly Goss.” 

“The fellow looks like an actor.” 

“The fellow is a clever man,” said Anne. “Yes, 
I’ll have an ice, Piggy, if you’ll bring it here.” 

She turned to her brother when young Worthing- 
ton had gone. 

“When are you going down, Tony?” 

“To-morrow.” 

“Come and lunch with me.” 

“Awfully sorry, old girl, but I can’t. I’m booked 
already for lunch.” 

“But I want to see something of you.” 

Tony wrinkled his clearly moulded eyebrows. 

“You might — if you could get to Waterloo in time 
to see me off.” 

“Is that the only time?” 

“Absolutely.” 

“Well, I’ll be there. What train?” 

“The four-seven.” 

She reflected. She could leave the office for an 
hour without neglecting her work. 

“I’ll come. Only you must be there by quarter to.” 


40 


THE LURE 


“Yes — we’ll have tea together, or what they call 
tea in the refreshment-room. . . . Oh, I say, Anne, 
there’s a man I must introduce to you — he’s a good 
little chap, a Captain Host. He’s invalided home from 
the Soudan — he was inspecting somewhere up the 
White Nile, and got enteric. I brought him up with 
me.” 

Anne, following his eyes, saw a man in ordinary 
evening dress talking to Piggy, who was on his way 
back to her. He was excessively bronzed and rather 
sallow, his nondescript hair was thinned as if he had 
recently lost a good deal. He was inclined to be short, 
but his thinness and muscular wiriness prevented one 
from noticing the fact. 

“He looks nice,” she said, without much enthusi- 
asm. 

“I’ll haul him along; he’s a very decent sort.” 

Tony left her to accost the two. 

They came up all three together. 

Piggy presented his ice, and went off to find his 
next partner; Tony departed to discover his aunt, after 
he had introduced the new-comer. 

“I’m afraid I can’t ask you for a dance, Miss Moor- 
house,” said Captain Host. “The doctors won’t let 
me yet. It was coming on false pretences, I know, 
but I’ve been at the Back of Nowhere so long that 
I like seeing lots of people, and lots of girls in pretty 
frocks.” 

“You’ve been somewhere up the White Nile, haven’t 
you?” said Anne. Host sat down beside her. 

“Five years,” said he. “For two of them I didn’t 
see a white face more than four times a year.” 

“Weren’t you horribly lonely?” 

He smiled, and she saw that his eyes, which were 
very blue, were the most attractive feature in his face. 

“Towards the end of that two years, I began to 


THE LURE 


4i 


feel I didn’t want to come back at all into civilization. 
I was as happy as — what is one happy as nowadays? 
— not as a king, anyway.” 

He spoke in a quiet voice, and something about it 
convinced her that here was a man who, for long 
periods together, had been silent. 

“Then you were sorry to come home now?” she 
said. 

“Sorry? I should think not. I feel like a school- 
boy on a holiday. Besides, for the last two years I’ve 
had my leave each summer, so I haven’t got wedded 
to work.” 

“And you came back to England ?” 

“No; last year I went for a camping tour through 
Albania.” 

“Where’s that?” inquired Anne. “My geography 
is very shaky.” 

“It’s next door to the Balkans. It’s a wonderful 
country. Some day, when there are fewer brigands, 
Cook will discover it.” 

“I hope not,” said Anne. “Did you see any brig- 
ands?” 

“I had coffee with one. He was an amusing host, 
and gave me a lucky piece of horn as a remembrance 
and safeguard.” 

Anne laughed. “What an obliging brigand!” 

“He was not always so obliging. The week before 
he had trapped half a dozen Turkish soldiers, and 
chopped their ears off. He had them made into a pie, 
and forced the poor creatures to eat it.” 

“Oh, how horrible!” cried Anne, with a shudder. 

Captain Host looked apologetic. 

“I am sorry, Miss Moorhouse. I quite forgot that 
you would be shocked at the story,” he said in genuine 
concern. “One loses one’s sense of proportion after 
getting familiar with that kind of thing.” 


42 


THE LURE 


“I never should,” said Anne. 

“But then, you are not a man.” 

Anne looked up suddenly to see Goss standing be- 
fore her. 

“Our dance, I think, Miss Moornouse.” 

She rose and took his arm, smiling her farewell to 
Captain Host. 

“Is Mrs. Goss here?” she asked. 

“No — she had a previous engagement,” he replied 
in a tone which did not betray much knowledge or 
interest in his wife’s doings. “You must come and 
dine with us, Miss Moorhouse,” he added, “if Ken- 
sington is not too far. Will you?” 

“It would be very nice,” returned Anne in a banal 
way. Somehow Goss’s personality had the effect of 
making her feel banal. He was very much the Adonis 
to-night. She was conscious in an occult way that 
this brilliant person showed condescension in dancing 
with her. And his manner of looking at her discom- 
posed her; she could not tell why. He talked very 
pleasantly as they waltzed round, and managed to 
convey a compliment or two in a subtle manner. 

“Do you know, there is something different in you 
from the other women in the room,” he said at last. 

“I expect they have more expensive frocks on,” said 
Anne, prosaically. 

“It isn’t a question of frocks, though yours is sim- 
ple and beautiful. It is an atmosphere, an impression, 
something virginal, brave, unspoilt.” 

“Tell me that I am more than half school-girl,” 
said Anne, laughing and rather embarrassed. 

“You won’t mind my saying what I think — you 
won’t be Grundyish with me,” he said, half-mocking, 
half-portentous. “No, you are too natural to be the 
last.” 


THE LURE 


4 3 


“Why should I be,” she said, always afraid of not 
playing her role lightly enough in this masquerade that 
called itself London society. 

“Well, it’s the virginal in you that attracts me — 
it has always attracted me in you. A certain raideur, 
a springtime gaucherie which is sheer grace, a diffi- 
dence, a charm — don’t ask me to analyze it. Do you 
know a certain Tanagra figurine in the Louvre col- 
lection, I wonder? It was buried some thousands of 
years, and all the fresh tints, rosy and blue, have be- 
come worn, yet embodies that grace of young woman- 
hood as nothing modern has ever done. It is a girl 
holding draperies about her, scarcely more than a 
child, slender, a little frightened, resolved to be bold, 
inclined to be pndique, as the French say — a flower in 
clay, wholly suggestive of innocence. . . . The early 
Victorians understood the beauty of the pose — then 
the stupid middle classes turned it into thick-waisted 
virtue — a very different affair. The middle classes 
spoil any ideal. One has no further interest in Omar 
Khayyam since he is to be found in Tooting. But I 
was speaking about the early Victorians. The deli- 
ciousness of those slim girls in vast bonnets who 
thought only in lavender and lilies, with their 'Yes, 
mamma/ and 'Pray, papa/ and 'Sir’ to any male 
stranger! Nowadays a girl of seventeen is both a 
woman of the world and a hoyden, the girl of twenty- 
seven a rake. The early Victorian girl of twenty-seven 
was playing with sweet gravity at being a reverend 
matron, with a pretty lace cap on her young head.” 

Anne was a little puzzled, a little surprised, a little 
shocked. 

'But those early Victorian women were such hypo- 
crites,” she objected. “With their fainting at the least 
provocation and their woolwork and their gentility.” 

“Oh, you are thinking of the decadence of a charm- 


44 


THE LURE 


ing phase, when it had reached the country parsons 
and the greengrocers !” 

“I am sure that I am not in the least early Vic- 
torian, ’’ said Anne, with decision. “You are alto- 
gether mistaken in me. I know a great deal of the 
world.” 

Goss smiled at her assertion. “I prefer to think that 
you have a touch of it which makes you different to 
the modern woman.” 

The dancers had stopped, and he led her to the end 
of the room, near the opening which led into the con- 
servatory. 

She was not engaged for the next dance, and when 
it began and he had to excuse himself to seek his next 
partner, she remained where she was, in the shade of 
the two great palms which stood on either side of the 
exit to the softly lighted retreat beyond. 

A man and a woman passed her on their way to a 
seat inside the door, so close that it was difficult for 
Anne to avoid hearing what they said, though she did 
not trouble to let the import of their conversation 
penetrate her mind until she heard the words — 

“Who is this Goss, then?” 

It seemed a universal question to-night. 

“I should call him an elegant charlatan, a limelight 
outsider,” the man’s voice replied. 

“But his people are all right — aren’t they?” said 
the woman, doubtfully. 

“I believe there’s good blood on the mother’s side. 
She was Irish, I believe, Dublin Irish. It doesn’t make 
any difference — he’s received in most places, even 
where he’s acknowledged to be a pusher. All the 
women are in love with him — they say that Lady Es- 
meralda Heding would risk her reputation — what’s 
left — any day for him. But Goss is far too wily for 
that.” 


THE LURE 


45 

“Lady Esmeralda Heding ? Why, that is that pretty 
woman in green he was dancing with a little while 
ago.” 

“Oh, Lady Esmeralda’s a great beauty. Don’t you 
remember the scandal two years ago? Now it’s Goss.” 

“Has he money?” 

“He’s run through several fortunes — and has been 
down on his luck lots of times. He’s been pretty well 
everything. He had a picturesque career on the 
Stock Exchange, kept a bucket-shop, and started some 
boom in connection with motors, then he was on the 
Frolic City Committee when the place first started at 
Shepherd’s Bush. Incidentally he once invented a 
gambling system and broke the bank of Monte Carlo. 
He also married a rich wife. He’s running a paper 
now, I believe. Women always help him out, though 
he’s as unscrupulous as they make them.” 

“I think you must be unjust to him.” 

“I dare say I am. Most successful men are charla- 
tans, after all. And I allow him brilliance. Those 
financial articles of his in the Englishman's Review 
last autumn were able enough though mad.” 

The woman laughed. “You are a horrid cynic.” 

“Not at all — I only find excuses for being among the 
mediocre.” 

Anne could not help feeling interested. 

How much of it was truth? The speaker obviously 
disliked Goss, and it was hardly to be expected that 
he would be fair to any man for whom he had an 
antipathy. She felt inclined to take up cudgels in 
his behalf. It was so typically insular to deprecate 
Goss’s versatility, to sneer at his activity. Had Mrs. 
Goss really been an heiress ? She doubted it. A vision 
of that peevish, handsome-featured woman rose up be- 
fore her in clear colors. She had no great liking for 
Mrs. Goss ; she had been rather sorry for her husband. 


4 6 


THE LURE 


He, all enthusiasm, to be wedded to a wet-blanket ; he, 
a lover of warmth and beauty, to have the companion- 
ship of a woman who gave a prevailing impression 
of coldness and lack of emotion; he, who was all mo- 
bility — Celtic blood in his veins, to be attached to a 
woman whose face proclaimed that her thoughts only 
ran in cast-iron lines of convention! 

As she pondered these things, a second pair emerged 
from the crowd, smiling and talking to each other. 
They made their way past her into the conservatory, 
but towards the more secluded end. A low laugh 
reached her as they ensconced themselves in a hidden 
corner, a laugh in which there was flattered tender- 
ness, a touch of familiarity. 

The man was Goss and the woman was Lady Esmer- 
alda. The trail of the perfume which Lady Esmeralda 
wore lingered on the air. 


CHAPTER VI 


A NNE waited on the main line platform at Water- 
loo, and looked anxiously at the clock. Tony 
had not kept his word, it was one minute to four 
instead of a quarter to, and there was no sign of his 
impending presence. 

Anne was vexed and disappointed. She was accus- 
tomed to be treated cavalierly by her brother, but after 
Piggy’s good-natured warning of the previous night, 
she had particularly looked forward to the opportunity 
of a talk with him. No amount of letters would serve 
her as well. Four o’clock struck — still no Tony. 

Then she turned swiftly on hearing her name pro- 
nounced from behind. 

She saw Captain Host. 

“I have a message for you from your brother, Miss 
Moorhouse. I met him a little while ago in Bond 
Street, and he said you would probably be here to see 
the four-seven out. He asked me to tell you that after 
all he is motoring down with some friends of his.” 

“How tiresome of him !” said Anne, her face falling 
in spite of herself, and showing how keen her disap- 
pointment was. “I did want to see him, and he prom- 
ised faithfully to come.” 

“I’m sorry to be the bearer of unsatisfactory news,” 
Captain Host replied. “I hope it was not anything 
very important ” He hesitated, noting her dis- 

tressed face. “It was too bad of your brother to have 
dragged you up here for nothing.” 

47 


48 


THE LURE 


“He might at least have telephoned/’ said Anne. 
“I suppose he didn’t remember.” 

“I shall make it my first duty to scold him when I 
get to Aldershot. But won’t you let me atone for his 
misdeeds a little, and reap the reward he would have 
had by taking you off somewhere to tea?” 

“There isn’t time,” said Anne. “There are only 
three minutes.” 

“I am not going by this train.” 

Anne hesitated, and while she did so, Host hailed 
a taxi, for by this time they stood outside the booking- 
office. 

“The Carlton,” he said to the driver, and waited for 
Anne to get in, which she did. “Unless you’d like to 
go somewhere else,” he added with diffidence, turning 
to her for enlightenment. 

“No,” replied Anne. “I’ve never been to the Carl- 
ton.” 

“I believe there are all sorts oi new tea-places about 
town, but I have a preference for places I know,” said 
Host with simplicity. 

Anne could not help feeling a liking for this 
sparsely-built, kindly man, whose anxiety to please .her 
shone out of his blue eyes. 

She drew him on, although the subject had no par- 
ticular attraction for her, to speak about his life in 
the Soudan, and found herself growing interested in 
spite of herself in his baldly-told modest narratives of 
the dangerous places and events in which his lines 
had been cast. Something of the vastness of that huge 
heart of Africa grew before her, though he used no 
picturesque phrases as Goss would have done; of the 
miles on miles of desolate swamp inhabited by croco- 
diles and hippopotami, by countless reptiles and count- 
less birds ; of the herds of elephants that roam through 
the sun-dried grass, peaceful monsters until their wrath 


THE LURE 


49 

or suspicion arises; of the strange tribes that live like 
animals on the tropical banks in their straw huts. 

And yet they were sitting in the palm-court of the 
Carlton with its mock tropicality, its tinkle of tea-cups, 
its discreet waiters and the strains of the latest waltz 
from the well-corseted Hungarian band. 

They finished tea at last, and Anne declared she 
must return to the office before it closed. Captain 
Host was surprised — he did not know that she had an 
office. 

So as they drove towards Brooke Street in another 
taxi-cab, Anne in her turn told him about the Orb , 
about its comic-opera atmosphere, and about the office- 
boy and the duchesses. 

Just before the taxi drew up, he said to her — 

“If you would care to send a message to your 
brother through me, Miss Moorhouse, I’ll deliver 
it most faithfully. I shall be seeing him to-mor- 
row.” 

“There isn’t a message I could give you,” answered 
Anne, her thoughts suddenly returning to her anxiety. 
She looked into the honest blue eyes that met hers so 
straightly. 

“To tell you the truth,” she said, speaking on im- 
pulse, “I’m often rather worried about Tony. He’s 
never had a mother, you see, and I’m his only sister. 
He’s very young still, and I’m afraid he’s rather a 
propensity for ” she hesitated. 

“Getting into hot water,” suggested Host, with a 
smile. 

“Yes,” said Anne. “And now something makes me 
think ” She broke off. 

“If I can help you or him, I will,” said Host, with 
sincerity. “I must get to know your brother better, 
Miss Moorhouse. I’ll get him to dine with me his 
first spare evening.” 


50 


THE LURE 


“You are very kind,” said Anne gratefully. “He 
likes you and admires you. Tony would do anything 
for any one he really liked — he has ever so many good 
points.” 

“I like what I have seen of him immensely,” said 
Host. “He’s an unaffected youngster. Why, here 
we are!” 

He jumped out to see her in. 

“Don’t worry, Miss Moorhouse,” he added in a seri- 
ous voice, as she bade him good-bye. “I’ll keep an 
elder-brotherly eye on this Tony of yours; my mother 
lives at Aldershot, you know, so I shall be down there 
all the time. I think your brother would like the 
mater, she’s a thoroughly sporting old lady, all boys 
get on with her splendidly.” 

He cut her thanks short, and jumped again into the 
taxi, while Anne went slowly up the office stairs. 

She met Goss near the head of the stairs, perfectly 
dressed as usual, from his tie to his patent toe-tips ; de- 
bonair, magnificent, joyous. It was characteristic of 
Goss that he was never conspicuously foppish in his 
attire, though the most exacting tailor could never find 
anything inappropriate in his dress on any occasion. 
He hit the mean of good taste, which is the object of 
every man who studies the art of dressing. 

He threw her a glance, hurried, absent-minded, yet 
appreciative. He always had the air of an Alexander, 
fresh from conquered worlds, politely eager for others. 
I refer, of course, to the emperor, not to the 
knight. Vitality emanated from him like an in- 
visible halo. 

Anne had scarcely seen him that day; Mr. Wright 
had informed her that Goss was in a devil of a super- 
cilious temper, but the time left over from interviewing 
titled and rustling dames in the inner office had been 
spent by the great man in appointments outside. 


THE LURE 


5i 

“Tired, Miss Moorhouse?” he asked, pausing an 
instant. 

“Not at all, thank you,” she said. 

He passed down the staircase, and she went towards 
her own room to write an article purporting to origi- 
nate from the pen of an Austrian Royal Highness. 
Against herself she found herself inserting Gossisms 
into the text, brilliant and impudent pieces of raillery 
masquerading as dignified British common sense. She 
hated them, yet was amused to discover how the octo- 
pus personality of the man had invaded her mind, how 
distinctly she had become influenced by his theories 
and fanfares. 

The next afternoon something happened which put 
her again out of her bearings in summing up the char- 
acter of her chief. She had seen something of the 
seamy side of journalism already, for like vultures 
around carrion, men and women, shabby and smart, 
young and old, came to the offices of the new paper 
almost daily — with or without appointments, with or 
without introductions or credentials, but all with the 
hope of employment. In some cases it was a desper- 
ate need, and the effort to make a dignified application 
and not a fierce demand for work was visible in the 
hungry eyes of the applicant. Usually these people 
waited in the office in which Anne worked; the more 
elegant waiting-room into which she had been shown 
on the occasion of her first visit to the Orb was used 
for visitors of importance. Sometimes Goss saw them, 
more often he did not. 

This particular afternoon, an elderly woman, whose 
hair was obviously dyed, was ushered into Anne’s 
room, and took the seat which the boy offered her, 
with an air which was meant to convey importance and 
assurance. 

She had no appointment, she replied to Miss Minns’ 


52 


THE LURE 


question a moment later, but if Mr. Goss would kindly 
read the letter of introduction which she had brought, 
he would surely see her. 

Miss Minns disappeared, and the caller relapsed into 
a fidgety silence. Anne guessed her to be over forty, 
in spite of the powder on her thin cheeks, and the 
chestnut hair, which was gray at the roots. The thin 
hands which lay in her lap twitched nervously. 

“It won’t be a long interview,” thought Anne, with 
a pang of pity, noticing the woman’s tawdry appear- 
ance. Her dress was suggestive of shabby theatrical 
finery, and had a pathetic air of living up to a resplend- 
ent past. 

Miss Minns looked in again. 

“I’ve sent in your letter ; but I don’t expect Mr. Goss 
will be able to see you this morning,” she said, in an- 
swer to the anxious eyes. “I know he’s expecting the 
Duchess of Mai vers every minute, because he told me 
so.” 

“I don’t mind how long I wait,” said the visitor. 

“And after that he has an appointment else- 
where.” 

Miss Minns went out again to the letters she was 
typing. 

The woman sighed, and looked first at the walls, 
then at Mr. Wright’s empty chair, then at Anne’s busy 
fingers. 

“Do you really think he won’t be able to see me?” 
she asked at last, with a desperate note in a voice she 
tried to make jaunty. 

“I don’t know at all,” said Anne, gently. “I know 
he has been refusing to see all kinds of people this 
morning — he is so frightfully busy, you know. But 
perhaps your letter ” 

She paused. It was plain that the visitor was only 
one more of the unemployed who were turned daily 


THE LURE 


53 

away from the office door, and she hated to destroy 
a hope. 

“It's a letter from an old friend,” said the woman. 
“At least a friend of his wife’s — she used to be on 
the stage once, you know, and so was I. My name is 
Reynolds, Mrs. Kate Reynolds — you may have heard 
it? I’ve taken up journalism two years. I used to 
write for the Harmsworth papers. . . .” Her voice 
faltered again, she could not get the tone of hungry 
anxiety out of it. 

“I hope Mr. Goss may be able to do something for 
you,” said Anne sympathetically. She could say no 
more. 

But Miss Minns returned at that instant and, to 
Anne’s great surprise, announced that Mr. Goss would 
see Mrs. Reynolds for a moment if she would come 
through to his private office. 

Hope flickered afresh in the journalist’s eyes, and 
she followed Miss Minns out of the room with a rust- 
ling of soiled silk finery. 

Anne settled down to her proof-correcting. She had 
only been a minute or two at work, when Jimmy en- 
tered the room hastily. 

“Mr. Goss has telephoned through for you to go to 
his room at once, miss.” 

“Has the lady who was with Mr. Goss gone?” she 
asked in some amazement, as she rose. 

“No, miss.” 

Anne hurried out. 

As she opened the door of Goss’s room, she hesitated 
on seeing Goss, more perturbed than she had seen him, 
bending over the sofa. Upon it lay the figure of Mrs. 
Reynolds. 

For an instant Anne paused, not knowing whether 
she was intended to witness this scene. Then, with a 
little cry at her own stupidity, she came forward. 


54 


THE LURE 


“She fainted/’ said Goss, with a gesture. 

Anne summoned her practicality to her aid. 

“If she feels faint, I don’t think she ought to lie 
back. Bring her head forward. Have you any 
brandy ?” 

Goss held out his flask. “I have already given her 
some.” 

Anne administered another dose, but most of it went 
on the floor. 

Goss moved uneasily about the room. 

“This is very good of you* Miss Moorhouse.” 

She did not answer, but employed herself in chafing 
the woman’s hands. 

“Poor thing! I didn’t know what to do — it causes 
such a commotion in an office. . . 

The woman opened her eyes. The fainting-fit left 
the rouge like an unnatural island on her yellow cheek, 
the lines and wrinkles in her face had become more 
apparent than ever. 

“I’m better now,” she protested, making a feeble 
effort to get up. Goss put his hand on her shoulder, 
an elderly Apollo Belvedere, reassuring, magnificent. 

“My dear lady, you are not to stir. You won’t be 
fit to move for another ten minutes, then we’ll send 
you back in a taxi.” 

“Oh, but I can walk,” she declared, a faint red 
creeping into her cheeks beneath the rouge. 

“She hasn’t got the fare,” breathed Anne close to 
his ear. Goss understood, and restated his assertion, 
hastily. 

“I really can’t allow you to do any such thing. I 
have to send a message by taxi in your direction, it 
may just as well drop you at your rooms.” 

The telephone bell rang. He took up the receiver. 

“The Duchess has come? Please ask her to excuse 
me a moment, and show her into the waiting-room. 


THE LURE 


55 

Some one there already? I can’t help it. I’m engaged 
for a few moments.” 

The great Goss to keep a duchess waiting! It was 
unheard of. Anne, busily rubbing Mrs. Reynolds’ cold 
hands, felt her opinion of him rush up many points. 

He handed her the flask again, and Mrs. Reynolds 
at his insistence took another sip of it, coughing as the 
strong liquid went down her throat. 

“Don’t move,” he commanded her kindly, and then 

moved towards the window. “Miss Moorhouse ” 

he said, speaking in a low tone. 

Anne followed him. 

“Would you be so very kind as to take this woman 
back? It would be inhuman to let her go by herself. 

And ” he paused a moment, then feeling in a 

pocket produced a sovereign, “you might give what is 
over after the taxi to her landlady. As a matter of 
fact, I don’t think the poor creature has had a square 
meal for some time. That ought to feed her for a 
day or two. Don’t let her know, of course, but fix it 
up with the landlady somehow.” He spoke in an im- 
pressive whisper. 

The woman on the sofa turned her head, and rose 
feebly to her feet. 

Goss and Anne came forward simultaneously to her 
help, but assuring them that she was completely re- 
stored, Mrs. Reynolds thanked them profusely and 
apologetically. 

Goss resumed his magnificence. 

“Miss Moorhouse is kindly going to see you back,” 
he said, turning to Anne for corroboration, bland and 
benevolent. 

Anne smiled. 

“With pleasure,” she answered. 


CHAPTER VII 


A NNE felt that she had misjudged Goss in the 
blindest fashion. Because the surface was bril- 
liant, she had, with stupid readiness, assumed 
the man’s nature to be shallow. Because the world 
pronounced him a charlatan, she had acquiesced un- 
questioningly. 

With all the wholeheartedness of her nature, she 
swung around in the opposite direction. She amazed 
and silenced Mr. Wright when that querulous young 
man attacked his chief’s methods. Youth stifles criti- 
cism when it has once set up an idol, as a devotee stifles 
doubt, and Goss, eminently adapted to fill an altar 
gracefully from a woman’s point of view, could count 
henceforth on Anne’s loyalty. She rushed into parti- 
sanship for him on the spot. She saw concealed noble- 
nesses where there were none ; she invested Goss with 
a patent of chivalry. 

He had almost forgotten Mrs. Reynolds’ existence, 
but at Anne’s next interview with him, she was full of 
the subject. He submitted to listen with good-humored 
patience, as she told him that she had taken the woman 
to the address she had given, a miserably poor bed- 
sitting-room in a small lodging-house off the Gray’s 
Inn Road, had interviewed the landlady, and found 
that Mrs. Reynolds was in arrears for her lodging. 
Goss glanced at his watch. 

“Well, what can I do, Miss Moorhouse?” he said, 
meeting Anne’s earnest eyes. “She is no journalist 
— even if she were she would be of no earthly good to 
us at present.” 

56 


THE LURE 


57 


“If she has been on the stage, perhaps Mrs. Goss 
might have influence,” suggested Anne, blushing as she 
remembered that Goss had never told her himself that 
his wife was on the stage. 

“I’m afraid we must not count on help from my 
wife,” said Goss, in a non-committal voice. “Well! 
. . . let me see. ... I don’t believe in charity, 

you know.” 

“But you are charitable, all the same,” said Anne. 

He was inwardly amused. As a matter of fact, Mrs. 
Reynolds had brought him a letter from a woman to 
whom he owed a considerable debt of gratitude. But 
Anne’s evident assumption that he had been moved 
only by pity for a starving woman flattered him. He 
was habitually and carelessly generous, but never to a 
point when it inconvenienced himself. 

“In any case, if you would be so kind, you had bet- 
ter take her money on some pretext or other. What 
can we think of? I know — an article — which we will 
pay for immediately and never use. Tell her it may 
be crowded out.” 

“It is very kind of you,” said Anne, her eyes shin- 
ing. 

“Not at all — mere humanity,” replied Goss. He 
jotted down in his notebook that he would write to 
the woman from whom Mrs. Reynolds’ introduction 
came, to tell her he had done something for her prote- 
gee. He counted it a debt paid. 

“What was the address you went to?” he asked 
Anne. 

She produced an envelope upon which she had 
scribbled it. 

He raised his eyebrows. 

“When do you think of going there with the check ?” 

“This evening.” 

“H’m. It occurs to me that this house off the Gray’s 


58 THE LURE 

Inn Road mayn’t be at all the sort of place you should 
go to by yourself.” 

“It is in a very quiet road,” Anne replied. 

He smiled, and consulted his notebook again. 

“I am free between five and six. Are you?” 

“I haven’t very much to do,” Anne replied. 

“Well, then, we will go together, if that meets with 
your approval.” 

The pleasure in her frank brown eyes spoke for 
her. 

He contemplated himself with some amusement as 
chaperoning an ingenue on an errand of charity. But 
the new pose pleased him, and so did Anne. It was 
many years since the ingenue had interested him in the 
slightest, to pursue the unsophisticated was a danger- 
ous and unprofitable game. But Anne had brain as 
well as charm. In a word, she attracted him; per- 
haps, he thought sardonically, he had already arrived 
at the age when the innocent attracts more than the 
initiated. 

They went together to Gray’s Inn Road. Mrs. Rey- 
nolds was out, so that the undertaking was easier. 
Goss left a letter which he had scribbled offering £5 
for the article, and, doing the thing really well, paid 
the arrears of rent, enjoining the landlady to secrecy. 

A man and a girl passed them on the doorstep as 
they once more got into the taxi. 

Goss said, as he settled himself in beside Anne: 
“Just as I thought! I’m sorry I suggested your com- 
ing here — your aunt would never forgive me.” 

“Why?” asked Anne. 

“Didn’t you see those two who went in?” 

Anne was mystified, but did not like to say so. 

“It’s entirely my fault, I didn’t look at the address 
when I suggested your taking the woman back yester- 
day.” 


THE LURE 


59 

He was so emphatic in his tone of self-reproach 
that Anne said — 

“But Mrs. Reynolds is there ?” 

“My dear child, Mrs. Reynolds has probably no 
choice. Besides a woman like that who has knocked 
about Maiden Lane for twenty odd years probably 
knows what she is about. You should never have 
gone near the house by yourself. ,, 

“I don’t see that it’s done me any harm,” said Anne, 
puzzled. 

He looked at her with one of the brilliant and ten- 
der smiles that he reserved for women he meant to 
charm. 

“Of course not. You have no affinity for evil. 

Look here, Miss Moorhouse, where are you 
going now?” he added abruptly. 

“Home,” said Annie; “that is, to the pension.” 

“If I hadn’t promised to take some one out to dinner 
to-night, I should not let you go back to that atmos- 
phere of cooking and curlpapers for the evening. In 
any case I will drop you there on my way back.” 

“I’ve got to get something at the office first, thank 
you,” Anne replied. “They brought me in a manu- 
script at the last minute, and I was going to take it 
home with me. Only I forgot, and left it behind.” 

“You are a splendid worker,” he said, looking at her 
with approval. “Do you know that they are very rare ? 
You make your employment your interest. Most 
women make their employment their task, which is a 
vastly different thing.” 

“But if one didn’t put one’s heart into one’s work, 
it would be dull,” laughed Anne. 

“But that is the trouble in employing women. Their 
heart is off somewhere else, probably with some one 
they will meet as soon as working hours are over. 
They are not capable of c oncentration in consequence. 


6o 


THE LURE 


They allow their emotions and personal interests to 
invade their working life. But you have not begun 
to have emotions yet, have you? You will be spoilt 
from that hour, probably.” 

“I am not at all emotional,” objected Anne, warmly. 

“You will be, my dear child.” 

“I don’t see that it is at all necessary,” she replied, 
with indignation. 

“It is, that’s the trouble of it. You have tempera- 
ment, though you don’t suspect it. Those eyes of yours 
give you away. The woman in you is asleep, like the 
Princess in the enchanted wood. Don’t let her be 
awakened too soon.” 

He knew that in telling her this, he was himself 
whispering into the ear of the sleeper. It is the man 
who does this who is responsible for the manner of her 
awakening, rather than the man who takes her by the 
hand and leads her into the forest path. He smiled 
into her puzzled eyes, and directed the taxi towards 
the office. “You can drop me there,” he explained. 

“I would rather walk back from Brooke Street,” 
Anne said. “It is the only exercise I get here. Some- 
times I feel as if I should get violent cramp through 
sitting still so much, though on Sundays I take the 
train out to the nearest country and walk for ten miles 
or so. Last Sunday I walked eighteen, and it did me 
no end of good.” 

“Alone?” 

“Yes, of course. I don’t know any girl who can 
walk decently in London.” 

Her slim limbs, all activity, did look as if they would 
rebel against the sedentary life of an office. 

“But — at this time of the evening — aren’t you fol- 
lowed pretty often?” 

Anne flushed. “Sometimes — I am spoken to. But 
I walk so quickly, you know.” 


THE LURE 6 1 

Goss contemplated this Diana of the pavements with 
a flickering smile. 

“It is so impertinent of them,” she went on, setting 
her young mouth. “They ought to be horse-whipped. 
I should do it myself if this were the country. I don’t 
see why I should give up the only bit of walking I 
have in the day because there are some utter cads 
about.” 

“Do you ever ride?” he asked. 

“Not here. I haven’t a horse.” 

“Have you a habit?” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, come and ride with me one morning in Rich- 
mond Park — one Sunday morning, I mean. I will, 
provide you with a mount.” 

“It would be glorious,” she cried, with joyful eyes. 

“Next Sunday?” 

“You really mean it?” 

“Of course I do. Wait a bit, let me see.” He con- 
sulted his notebook once again, and saw “E” scribbled 
in pencil against the day. That meant that he was 
motoring with Lady Esmeralda. It would do her good 
if he cancelled that arrangement. Nothing disciplines 
a woman like a little wholesome neglect. “Yes, I can 
manage it,” he said. “It will do me good. I’m not in 
such splendid condition as you are. But, then, I’m 
drifting into old age.” 

“What nonsense !” she laughed. “You are as young 
as young.” 

He loved her for that. At forty a man who trea- 
sures his appearance is nervous for his departing youth. 

Anne went back with a serene mind, her manuscript 
tucked under her arm. She would be able to look for- 
ward to Sunday all the rest of the week. It was ages 
since she had been on a horse, and it was unutterably 
kind of Goss to think of devoting a morning to her 


62 THE LURE 

pleasure. She put it down to pure philanthropy and 
good-nature. 

But destiny had other views. 

In the letter-rack was an envelope in Tony's hand- 
writing. She opened it. 

“Dearest old Girl : 

“Can you possibly raise me £20 ? I would ask Aunt 
Helen for some, only she is always at her last farth- 
ing, so she says, and for various reasons I’m not anx- 
ious to borrow from any one here. I’ll repay it punc- 
tually. If you can’t, let me know by return, there’s a 
good girl.” 


Anne flew to her jewel case, into which she put her 
spare cash. She had still seven pounds in the bank. 
She had six since her appointment to the Orb. She 
would have another four pounds at the end of the 
week, out of which she owed forty shillings for living 
expenses. She was almost sure that Goss would ad- 
vance her that sum. That left two pounds. Seven and 
six and two made fifteen. Perhaps she could get her 
weekly bill postponed by Miss Barrett to Saturday 
week; that would make seventeen — only three pounds 
short of twenty. She suddenly remembered her purse, 
where she kept her lunch money. It had already been 
depleted of all but a shilling for Mrs. Reynold’s bene- 
fit. She must deduct ten shillings then for petty ex- 
penses and luncheons. That was three pounds ten 
short of the sum he had asked, but it would be a con- 
siderable help. 

She wrote out a wire quickly; it was already ten 
minutes to eight. 

“Will send you sixteen pounds to-morrow. Anne.” 

Then she hurried out to the little telegraph office 


THE LURE 63 

just off Gordon Square, and returned to a cold din- 
ner. 

She felt troubled, there must be some cogent reason 
why Tony was shy just now of borrowing from his 
friends. He must be badly in debt again. 

But to her surprise, she herself received a wire ad- 
dressed to the office the next morning. 

“All right, don’t bother to send money. Coming up 
to town for week-end; will call in for you Sunday 
morning. Tony.” 

It was characteristic of him that he never restricted 
himself to twelve words for a telegram. 

She intercepted Goss as he was on the point of leav- 
ing the office. 

“I am so sorry, but I can’t come riding on Sunday 
after all. My brother is coming up from Aldershot, 
and wants to see me.” 

“Very well,” he said easily, mentally putting off 
Lady Esmeralda’s discipline. “Any Sunday. We’ll 
fix another.” 

“I am so disappointed,” said Anne, naively. 

“So am I ” 

She was more disappointed still when a letter from 
Tony reached her on Saturday night to say that he 
was not able to get away after all. There was some- 
thing behind all this, she was certain, and her heart 
was heavy with forebodings for her brother. Casual 
as his dealings with his sister usually were, his sud- 
den withdrawal of his request for money coming on the 
top of an urgent letter, and his second failure to keep 
an appointment with her, struck her as ominous. In the 
language of their childhood, he had funked meeting 
her, for some reason or other, as he always funked 
meeting her when he was in trouble. She had half a 
mind to go down to Aldershot herself, but she more 


than suspected that he was in town for the week-end as 
he had originally said. She wondered if Captain Host 
had kept his word. Somehow, she thought of him as a 
tower of refuge, after the promise he had made so 
earnestly. 


CHAPTER VIII 


u T^v EAR Miss Moorhouse : 

“Will you dine with my wife and myself at 
Hotel Savoy, 8 o’clock to-night? 

“Yours, H. G.” 

“Don’t reply unless you can’t come.” 

Anne very seldom had engagements in the evening. 
Her aunt was temporarily out of town. There was no 
reason why she should not accept the invitation, so long 
vaguely given. Besides, she was curious, she confessed 
to herself, about Mrs. Goss. Some men, says Mr. 
Frank Richardson, are Nature’s widowers. Goss was 
one of those men who are born ill-matched. One can 
never imagine any possible reason why some people 
have been drawn together out of the matrimonial lucky 
bag. The hard-eyed, somewhat depressed-looking 
woman Anne had seen in the office seemed the very last 
kind of woman that the fastidious Goss should ever 
have chosen; yet it was inevitable that he should be 
married — unsuitably. 

She dressed herself when she returned from the of- 
fice that evening with particular care. Goss’s approba- 
tion was a thing that she prized already. She had 
seen surprise, almost disapproval, in his eyes one morn- 
ing when she had dressed hurriedly and put on an old 
hat, and since that occasion she had, without acknowl- 
edging it to herself, taken pains to win back that cur- 
sory glance of admiration which he usually bestowed 


66 


THE LURE 


when she was looking her best. And this was entirely 
without coquetry, or an intention to attract. Girls 
of Anne’s undeveloped emotional nature usually live 
up to the standard set them by the taste of some one 
else of the other sex whom they rightly or wrongly set 
upon a pedestal. Anne had begun to set Goss on a 
pedestal. 

Out of regard for her newly-bought evening frock 
she took a taxi to the Savoy, and, having entered, 
seated herself a little nervously in the lounge. She 
was a little early, but when the hands of the clock 
pointed to eight, neither of the Gosses were visible. 
Anne began to have some misgiving. But at ten past, 
Goss came in, unperturbed, good-looking, smiling. 

“I’m sorry — I’m a little late. But I’ve been ringing 
up all sorts of people to get them to dine with us. 
My wife has a cold, and won’t venture out. But I 
really think that two people who work together in a 
prosaic office might be allowed to dine together occa- 
sionally unchaperoned, don’t you? Perhaps the Savoy 
is a little pronounced if we eat a deux in public. 
Would you mind the Grill Room at the Trocadero 
again?” 

Anne had nothing to say against it, and they went 
off in a taxi. Her head was erect on her slim neck 
above the white satin frock, her immaturity gave her 
the kind of grace which was the delight of Mino da 
Fiesole and Laurana. Goss’s eyes rested on her with 
the same kind of self-congratulatory appreciation that 
he bestowed on the pages of the Orb. They were in 
the Strand, where garish advertisements in colored 
lights flash in and out with maddening regularity 
above the narrow and crowded pavement below. The 
movement, the vitality of it all, moved Anne strongly. 
She was so fresh still from the country that the as- 
sumption of splendor with which that bigger village, 


THE LURE 67 

London, covers its humbugs and provincialisms, could 
still dazzle and entrance her. 

“I love it,^ she said, half to herself and half to him. 

Part of Goss’s popularity with women lay in his 
power of reading their unspoken thoughts. He di- 
vined from the eager way in which she leant forward 
and looked out at the lighted streets of what she was 
thinking. 

“Does it still feel new to you?” he asked. “How 
long have you been up in London ?” 

“Six months. But I haven’t often been in this part 
by night,” she replied. “Every time it makes me catch 
my breath — it is so wonderful. You will think me 
silly, perhaps — but I had never been in London till I 
came up last autumn, and before that the only town 
I’d been into was Dul worth, the little country town 
we drove into for shopping.” 

“How did you amuse yourself? Had you brothers 
and sisters?” 

“One brother — Tony. Oh, we used to walk over to 
the Dulworth golf-links, and fish in the trout stream, 
and follow the hounds on foot whenever they met near 
us. But I had never been into a theatre except to the 
yearly pantomime in the town-hall at Dulworth, if 
you can call that a theatre — till I came up here.” 

“You’ve seen most of the plays on now?” 

“I have seen three,” she answered gravely, and 
named them. 

He smiled at her. “What do you say to going to 
one to-night?” 

Her eyes became full of involuntary eagerness, and 
he realized, as he put it to himself, what a “kid” she 
was in spite of her dignified airs. 

“I should love it,” she said. Then a cloud rolled 
before the sunshine in her clear brown eyes. “But 
would it ” 


68 


THE LURE 


She hesitated, and he finished the sentence for her. 

“Be right to go unchaperoned? Well, I don’t an- 
ticipate that any one will notice either of us in a 
big, dark theatre, or remember about us if they did. 
London isn’t Dulworth.” 

She flushed, rebuked, before his cool amusement. 

“But they will all have begun by the time that we 
have had dinner.” 

“We will choose one that caters for late dinners — 
one with a curtain-raiser.” 

So it was settled, and while they ate dinner, stalls 
were booked for them at the St. James’s. 

“Tell me more about your life at Dulworth,” he 
said over the entree. 

“Oh, we didn’t live at Dulworth; we were four 
miles and a half out at a village called Littleham, 
where there are only four shops and a general stores 
and post-office where they sold straw hats and every- 
thing one can imagine. There’s nothing to tell. That 
is what makes it so different here — something hap- 
pens every day. There it was only getting up, three 
meals and going to bed, with two or three tennis and 
garden parties in the summer, and the hunt ball and 
a few dances at the houses around in the winter.” 

“That sounds a pretty attractive programme.” 

“Not when you’ve done it all your life, and know 
everybody inside it.” 

“I should not have thought that hard work and a 
Bloomsbury boarding-house were an improvement.” 

“Oh, but you don’t understand . . .” she said 

shyly. How could she tell him that she found life here 
infinitely more subtle, more incomprehensible, more 
alluring. How could she tell him that compared to 
the elderly Colonel whom she had met daily on the 
golf-links, whose psychology was open country, Goss 
himself was an undiscovered continent, and that it was 


THE LURE 


69 

the new and fascinating glimpse that she got of a 
hundred personalities, a hundred ways of life that 
were strange to her, that gave her the exhilaration of 
Cortez on the peak of Darien? 

‘‘It is the people who are exciting,” she said at 
length. “They are different. They don’t live in a 
pattern.” She spoke her own thought aloud. “Look 
at you, for instance.” 

“Well — you can’t call me exciting,” he said, filling 
her glass with champagne, and watching her flushed 
cheeks and brightened eyes. 

“You are different from the people — to the men — 
that I met at Dulworth,” she replied. “I never met 
any one like you before.” 

“And I never met any one like you before, little 
Lady Lavender,” said Goss, leaning slightly forward, 
and looking into her happy young eyes. 

She withdrew into herself like an oyster; his look 
had been directed at the woman rather than the indi- 
vidual in her, and though she was unable to define 
what had frightened her, she instinctively became more 
reserved. 

“You don’t mind my name for you?” he said in light 
apology. 

“I’m not little in any case,” she said, with boyish 
shyness. 

“You are — well, you are slender and fragrant and 
country-smelling, just like a tall stick of lavender. 
Now you are annoyed by my personalities. You 
mustn’t be — I can’t help being personal sometimes if 
the woman I am with is to be treated en earner ade . 
One relaxes one’s watch over oneself, and one’s 
thoughts bubble up to the surface in a way that they 
would never be permitted to do if we met in the 
carefully regulated social temperature of a formal 
dinner.” 


yo 


THE LURE 


“But you only say the — the nice things,” she ob- 
jected, “and they make me uncomfortable.” 

“Very well, I solemnly promise to say the disagree- 
able things as well, such as, for instance, Mademoi- 
selle, the end of one plait has escaped from its guard- 
ian hairpin, which detracts from the symmetry of your 
coiffure. Is that better?” 

“Much better,” she answered, laughing, and pushing 
in the hairpin to which he had referred. “Compli- 
ments don’t sound sincere somehow, and I dislike 
them.” 

“That is because you are unaccustomed to them, and 
extremely young. Wait. Besides, I never pay a com- 
pliment, that is, say a thing merely to please which is 
not true. As I told you, I only let my pleasure in your 
society bubble up to the surface. Do you think that 
we should be dining together if the pleasure were pre- 
tended? I tell you, I am selfish. It is my creed to 
be selfish. No man is successful, either in a career or 
with women or anything else in this world or the next 
if he does not carefully consult his own preferences 
and tastes and place them before the preferences and 
tastes of others. I, therefore, inveigle you into hav- 
ing dinner with me. . . . What sweet are you hav- 
ing? What do you say to a Pear Melba? You are 
school-girl enough to like something with lots of 
cream.” 

She was piqued by the school-girl reference, as he 
had anticipated, but submitted to the Pear Melba with 
the good grace of a healthy appetite. Her graceful 
leanness was not affected by the amount of food she 
consumed. The young, immature lines of her long- 
throat and figure, her mobile mouth with its promise 
of whimsicality, the soft hair — badly done, but surviv- 
ing the test, found favor with Huntly Goss, connois- 
seur in womenkind as he was, and he made not the 


THE LURE 


7i 


smallest effort to conceal it from himself. He was in- 
clined to sentiment with this slender, well-bred thing, 
and he watched the development of the inclination 
with gentle amusement. 

Anne made a good listener, and Goss talked well 
on any theme. He took the trouble to expound his 
ideas on the faults of English drama on the way to the 
theatre, interlarding his remarks with characteristic 
Gossisms. Some one once called Goss the Max Beer- 
bohm of the gab, and he certainly had an ironical 
art of caricature in speech which was his own and no 
one’s else. Anne was insensibly flattered because he 
took so much trouble to express himself to her. To 
herself she thought that it must bore him to talk to 
any one as ignorant as herself, accustomed as he was 
to brilliant experimenters of the Lady Esmeralda type. 

And it seemed perfectly natural to her that during 
an interval, after a moment’s searching the house with 
his glasses, he should give her rather a cavalier excuse 
and wander up to one of the boxes, where two well- 
dressed and pretty women received him with enthu- 
siasm. 

His kindness in taking her out, his interest in her, 
these were in themselves enough manna from heaven. 

He returned to her, his magnificent head and shoul- 
ders making most of the other men in the stalls look 
commonplace, and took his seat just as the lights went 
down for the third act. In so doing, his hand touched 
for an instant against her shoulder. Accidental as the 
contact apparently was, it sent the sensitive blood to 
her cheeks. He apologized carelessly, and sat down 
with the air of an Olympian. But as he leant back, his 
sleeve rested against her gloved arm. She feared to 
shrink away lest her movement should seem school- 
girlish and prudish, but was conscious of it to burning 
point. Goss, like most men who have had a catholic 


THE LURE 


72 

ana varied experience of women, had an amount of 
something which might be called the animal magnetism 
of sex, something indefinable, which nevertheless is a 
force. He was aware that he possessed this magnet- 
ism: women, at once more psychic and more animal 
than men, never failed to register his influence, like 
sensitive instruments recording a force in itself hos- 
tile to their safety. Intellect, delicacy, modesty, might 
hide the fact, but the needle trembled all the same. 

The play was over. Goss piloted the girl into the 
faint warmth of the spring night. Even the smell of 
petrol, the acrid and oily odor of the London street, 
could not rob the air of all its freshness and promise. 
The spell of stage-land was still upon Anne, the 
glamour of the land of romance was lent to the real life 
waiting for her outside. She, too, seemed on the brink 
of momentous things; perhaps she too might one day 
have a lover, and walk in the country of sweet and 
tremulous absurdities. A lover? She? Anne? the 
most prosaic of human beings in her own hard young 
judgment? Yet the night and her mode made the 
paradox seem no paradox at all, and Goss, though he 
might sometimes treat her as a school-girl, was accus- 
toming her to that subtle incense of admiration which 
turns a raw girl into a conscious woman. 

He had lit a cigarette by her permission, and the 
fragrance of the tobacco, the smell of the soap that 
he used, the odd masculinity of his personal magnet- 
ism, increased the sense in her of something new and 
womanly, and lulled into quiescence the feeling of 
uneasiness and alarm that she had experienced before. 

“Where shall we have supper, Lady Lavender?” 
Goss asked. 

“I don’t think I want supper, thank you,” she re- 
plied quickly. 

“But I think you do. Dinner was hours ago, and 


THE LURE 


73 

we have been through three acts of emotion since then. 
We’ll go somewhere bourgeois. The Criterion?” 

“But ” she protested. 

“Just an ice for you and a drink for me, then. You 
are not going to be obdurate about that.” 

He put his head out casually from the window and 
directed the driver to the Criterion. Anne resigned 
herself without effort. 

“I know — ” he exclaimed at last, like an excited 
boy, changing his mind rapidly, “we’ll go to the Gros- 
venor instead, that will take us across the St. James’s 
Park and give us a little air. Would you like that? 
It’s a heavenly night for March.” 

She agreed passively, and they were soon within 
the precincts of the park, where the trees, their lacy 
outline against the night sky thickened by swelling 
bud and bursting leaf, brought the semblance of the 
country into the heart of London. She answered in 
monosyllables to Goss’s talk, though from time to time 
her eyes wandered to his profile against the light of a 
passing electric lamp, with a dreamy and humble rec- 
ognition of its beauty. 

“Are you content with your evening, Lady Laven- 
der?” asked Goss gently, touching her hand. 

She drew it back swiftly, vaguely alarmed. 

“Yes, very content.” 

“A conventional answer.” 

She roused herself. “Isn’t lavender a conventional 
flower ?” 

“Nature’s conventions are only generalities. Laven- 
der is a haughty little flower, sitting stiffly on its very 
long stalk, but it has minute and dainty irregularities.” 

“Well, what do you want me to say?” she asked, 
with a smile. “I can’t say more because that means so 
much. You don’t realize what an event it is to some 
one from the country like me to go to a London thea- 


THE LURE 


74 

tre for about the fourth or fifth time in one’s life.” 

“Oh — the theatre!” 

“And with some one — nice,” she added in a shyer 
voice. 

Anne was not an adept at the game of flirtation. 

“I am — some one nice?” 

“Of course.” 

“It’s a vague term. It applies to curates and milk- 
puddings and cats.” 

“You know what I mean,” she returned with dis- 
comfort. 

“How should I ? What do you really and explicitly 
mean to convey by nice?” 

“That I like you,” she said, with another smile. 

“You don’t dislike me?” 

“I said I liked you. I think you are very clever, 
very good-looking,” she hesitated, and added, “very 
odd.” 

“Truth at the bottom of the well, as usual. Now, 
why odd?” 

“I don’t mean eccentric,” she said, laughing, “I 
mean odd to me. I don’t understand you at all in 
many ways.” 

“And you don’t trust me always?” He turned his 
fine eyes upon her. 

Anne did not; yet she did not put it into words. 
She hesitated. 

“It isn’t that I don’t trust you. It is that you have 
lived a different kind of life, and ” 

He laughed with considerable enjoyment. 

“A different kind of life! Lady Lavender, you are 
delicious.” 

He ended up with the note of indulgence that one 
puts into one’s voice in addressing an engaging kitten. 

Anne’s dignity was outraged. 

“You tempt me to say a great deal,” he continued 


THE LURE 


75 

with a whimsical egotism. “You know I have the 
enviable reputation of being a charlatan; people have 
told you that I am a rake and a sinner, and you have 
a sneaking fear that I occasionally clothe truth in 
fancy dress. Is that right ?” 

“In a way,” she admitted apologetically. “But I 
know that you are clever, and that people always label 
cleverness of one sort charlatanism. I know that you 
are not a sinner — because — well, it isn’t the same for 
you — I mean that you think differently about things; 
and besides, I know that you can be very kind; and 
you are a journalist, and journalism is mostly nothing 
else but truth in fancy dress.” Her explanation was 
a little confused, but earnestness shone out of her 
eyes. 

“So you constitute yourself my defender, in spite 
of the fact that you don’t trust me? I wonder if 
you are wise?” 

He looked out, seriously, almost sadly, towards 
Buckingham Palace, across the beds of scarlet tulips, 
scarlet even in the artificial light. 

Her generous spirit was in arms at once for him, 
and sent the blood into her cheeks. 

“I do trust you,” she cried impulsively. “I do in- 
deed.” 

It seemed that he had placed her with his arraigners, 
with those that were not able to look below the sur- 
face and condemned him unheard. Why did he sub- 
mit so patiently and amusedly to such calumnies ? Why 
did he take delight in posing for them? 

“Dear Lady Lavender.” He took up the girl’s long 
hand, so like that hand of a Tudor ancestress, and 
caressed the fingers with a smiling gentleness which 
set her heart beating irregularly and made her cool 
brain angry, not with him, for her modesty refused to 
credit that he was making love to her; but with her- 


THE LURE 


76 

self for being fluttered at what he, doubtless, consid- 
ered an unmeaning action as coming from himself to a 
girl of her years and foolishness. 

Girls of Anne’s temperament and upbringing are 
frequently on the horns of a dilemma when they move 
out of the sphere of accustomed conventions. Their 
education has bred in them a contempt for sentiment, 
so that they are easily misled by themselves and ignore 
danger signals; their fear of being self-conscious and 
prudish robs them of weapons. In many ways the 
over-feminized girl of seventy years back was better 
equipped to meet that natural enemy of unsuspecting 
young womanhood — the Accomplished Trifler. 


CHAPTER IX 


T HE image of Tony arose constantly in Anne’s 
mind like an uneasy ghost. She wrote him a 
letter begging him to come to see her soon, or 
if not to give her an opportunity of coming down one 
Sunday to Aldershot. This, however, he answered 
evasively; he was motoring nearly every week-end, 
so it was no use her coming down. He was certain 
to be coming up to town soon, and he would take her 
out to a dinner and a theatre. 

Then, on a sudden inspiration, she wrote to Piggy, 
begging him to call on her next time he was in town. 
The loyal Piggy replied by return to the effect that 
he should fetch her to dine out with him the very 
next Saturday if she had no other engagement. 

Piggy’s clean and wholesome countenance, plain as 
it was, comforted Anne as soon as she beheld it. The 
carefully groomed Piggy was absolutely out of setting 
in the dingy boarding-house drawing-room, with its 
colored art nouveau statuettes, where she joined him 
as soon as he was announced. Well-washed young 
subalterns and Mr. Hertz and his kind were not of a 
feather. 

“I say, Anne, how can you stick it out in a place 
like that?” he exclaimed, as they drove towards Pic- 
cadilly. 

“It’s cheap and respectable, Piggy dear.” 

“But surely there are other places where you could 
stay — ladies’ clubs and such-like. My young aunt — 
the one that’s studying singing at the Royal College, 
77 


THE LURE 


78 

stays at quite a decent one, in a decent part of Lon- 
don, and it’s not dear.’ 

“Do you know the address ?” 

“I’ll get it from Mother and post it on to you. 
I wonder Tony hasn’t seen to your being better in- 
stalled.” 

“My dear Piggy, it wouldn’t perturb Tony if I lived 
in a dustbin.” 

“Come, I say, Anne, that’s rather hard on Tony.” 

“Well, listen to the history of the last two appoint- 
ments he’s made with me.” 

She told him the history of her recent dealings with 
Tony, omitting the tale of his request for money. 

“It’s pretty bad,” commented Piggy. “I shall tell 
him so, the old rotter. He doesn’t deserve to have a 
sister.” 

Anne reflected. 

“But there is something behind it all, Piggy; and 
it’s that which is bringing my young hairs with sor- 
row into the brush. Seriously, what is wrong? I am 
not a child — I’m out in the world, and if you know of 
anything that is not as it should be with Tony, I’d 
ten thousand times rather know the truth and hold a 
consultation with you as to what had best be done.” 

Piggy thought, and glanced uncomfortably into 
Anne’s great eyes. The two had been on terms of 
comradeship ever since they were ten, but he shrank 
from giving his friend away, or from discussing his 
private affairs with his sister. 

“If it’s money, I may be able to help.” 

“You couldn’t help in this,” he replied inadvertently. 

She had sudden illumination. 

“You can’t deceive me. I shall be very wise. I’m 
not a school-girl. No one need know but you that I 
have guessed. It is a woman ?” 

“Well ” 


THE LURE 


79 


“Yes, yes. What sort of a woman?” 

He was uncomfortable. “It’s not the sort of thing 
to discuss with you, Anne.” 

“Yes, it is. I am not ignorant of life . . . there 
was another bother — with a girl — at home. I knew 
about that. Is it like that again? You knew too. 
Dear Piggy, do be frank and sensible.” 

“It’s a married woman,” said Piggy bluntly. 
“Tony’s been an ass about her, and if he doesn’t take 
care, he’ll get into a mess.” 

“A lady?” 

“Not exactly. She’s not a bad sort, only she has a 
beast of an outsider of a husband.” 

“But . . . she must be a horrid woman ... to 
flirt with Tony.” 

“She is more idiot than knave. Only — Anne, it’s 
beastly to talk to you about such things ! — what every 
one sees, except Tony, is that the little cad is giving 
her enough rope to hang herself with, and then will 
come down on Tony to pay the damage to the family 
crockery. I’ve talked to Tony by the hour, but he’s 
touchy, as you know, and he imagines he’s discretion 
itself.” 

“Then what did he try to borrow twenty pounds 
for ?” exclaimed Anne, off her guard. 

“She asked him for it, probably. He let out as much 
to me, and I refused to lend him a halfpenny for that 
purpose. He’s spent a lot more than is necessary on 
her already. I hope he wasn’t cad enough to cadge 
from you ?” 

“No . . .” said Anne, equivocally. “No. He has 
refused to borrow from me.” 

“I’m glad of that.” 

“Can’t you show him plainly , Piggy, how wicked 
and silly he is?” 

“My dear Anne, he thinks he’s in love with her. 


8o 


THE LURE 


And he prides himself on being prudent and hiding the 
thing up. But she’ll give him away sooner or later, 
no matter how careful he is. Half his mess knows it 
already. If there should be an eruption, of course, 
I’d do what I could.” 

“Does he see anything of Captain Host?” asked 
Anne suddenly. 

“Of Host? Yes, a certain amount. Host’s a good 
little chap. Tony admires him a good deal. Splendid 
polo player. Tony dines there sometimes. Host’s 
mother lives near Aldershot, you know, and she’s very 
popular.” 

Then Host was keeping his promise. 

“Isn’t there anything I can do f” asked Anne. 
“Could I see her?” 

“Good gracious, no! We can neither of us do any- 
thing but watch and pray, as the hymn says. That’s 
why I wished you not to know. But you needn’t 
worry — Tony’s got a genius for pulling through tight 
places.” 

“There’s no chance of his battalion being shifted to 
India, is there?” she asked. 

“That would be the best solution possible. No. 
But Tony could exchange and go to Alexandria if he 
wanted to. He doesn’t want to, and that’s the bother 
of it. Let’s talk of something else.” 

Anne thought for a moment silently, and then said : 
“Yes, we’ll talk of something else. But will you let 
me know — if there are fresh developments.” 

“I’m not promising anything. But if there is any 
way in which we can collaborate, or if there is any- 
thing that you can do, I’ll let you know .... How’s 
the editing going on?” 

“We are really busy at last. Mr. Goss gives less 
time to duchesses and more to proofs,” said Anne, with 
a laugh. “And the rest of us are hard at it.” 


THE LURE 


81 


“What do you do ?” 

“I’m a kind of office maid-of-all-work. Tinker-in- 
chief, head ghost, piano behind the scenes.” 

“But you’re writing for it ?” 

“Of course — under several titled pseudonyms. Only 
you mustn’t give us away. Nominally, you see, the 
paper is written and edited by people with straw- 
berry leaves in their hats. Really it’s run by people 
like ” 

“You?” 

“Oh, no. Lots of them have more experience than 
me,” said Anne naively. But she thought of Mr. 
Wright’s acrid remark of the morning: “Goss is run- 
ning the paper on promises to duchesses which he 
don’t mean to keep, and talented amateurs on amateur 
salaries. Always excepting Thompson.” 

Thompson was the cynical sub-editor who ran the 
practical part of the paper and was friendly with 
Wright. 

“The sub-editor has edited lots of papers,” she ex- 
plained in a manner innocent of sarcasm, “and Mr. 
Wright, the business manager, has had a great deal 
of experience.” 

“When is the paper to come out?” asked Piggy. 

“On the first of May,” answered Anne mechanically, 
realizing suddenly that it would approach a miracle if 
the paper were ready by that date. But she had such 
blind faith in Goss, that she was fully persuaded that 
it would. Had she not heard Mr. Wright himself give 
grudging tribute to Goss’s powers of making bricks 
without straw? Only, the fact that he did so by un- 
usual methods irritated Mr. Wright. Thompson, on 
the other hand, simply shrugged his shoulders and 
proceeded on his way. 

“Goss knows what he’s about,” he replied once. 
“We sha’n’t lose by it, anyway.” 


82 


THE LURE 


“We’re the laughing stock of every newspaper of- 
fice between Charing Cross and Ludgate Hill,” Mr. 
Wright retorted. 

“My dear Wright — what is the object of a news- 
paper manager? To make money?” 

“For the syndicate, when he represents one.” 

“We presume that the syndicate has faith. Goss 
means to make money — for some one — and he will — 
by eccentric methods. And we sha’n’t suffer either. 
If the paper lasts a week or a month or a year, we 
shall have scooped in a good salary, paid regularly for 
every week we’ve been working here — in your case 
three months, isn’t it? And I’m not grumbling at 
that.” 

“Some one will suffer,” said Wright. 

“That’s their affair,” murmured Thompson, shrug- 
ging his shoulders, as Lord Fleet, one of the principal 
shareholders, passed through on his way to Goss’s 
private office. Goss himself came in a moment later 
accompanying an elderly man to the door himself. He. 
was repeating some of his stock phrases: “We mean 
to make this the biggest journalistic venture ever start- 
ed in England. ... It is only in England that it 
could be done. ... We are introducing Sel fridge 
methods, dignified by the extraordinary nature of our 
objects, and raising the whole tone of a press which 
only caters for the suburban middle classes. . . .” 
His voice melted into indistinctness as he went out 
into the passage. 

“Lord Fairton,” said Wright, sotto voce. 

“Another shareholder,” added Thompson. 

“I hope you’ll send me a copy of the paper when 
it comes out, and mark your articles,” remarked Piggy, 
with a grin. 

“I’ll send it to you, and if you guess which article^ 


THE LURE 83 

Eve written, HI present you with a box of cigarettes.” 

“ Against a dozen of gloves.” 

“Of course. Size six and a half. One pair will 
do, as I know you’re hard up and you’re certain to 
lose.” 

“Oh, a dozen won’t break me.” 

The office in Brooke Street took on a more office- 
like appearance during that last fortnight. Even Goss 
lost something of his blandness. There were fewer 
rustling skirts and attendant footmen, and less tinkle 
of tea-cups. 

Anne grew accustomed to hear Goss say that this 
or that must be done, and in answer to the objection 
that it was impossible, he invariably used the irritating 
formula — 

“Impossible is the reply of a fool.” 

And the worried member of the staff somehow ac- 
complished what was required of him. Journalistic 
reinforcements were pressed into the service of the 
Orb for these last hurried days. Thompson worked 
day and night, and spent a good deal of time at the 
printers in the city, correcting proofs and re-arrang- 
ing pages and blocks in the greasy atmosphere of the 
workshop itself. Anne never knew how many new 
faces she would find in Brooke Street. They all lived 
at high pressure. 

The miracle took place. The Orb appeared in good 
time. 

Mr. Wright considered that the paper had been 
ushered into the world in a way which was nothing 
short of disgraceful. That the infant was a healthy 
one to judge by the sales of the first number only 
added to his gloom. 

“First numbers always sell. It was bound to, after 
the advertisement. I tell you, no amount of capital 


84 THE LURE 

behind could stand this rate of reckless expenditure. 
Goss is mad.” 

“There’s method in the lunacy,” said Thompson, 
with a sneer. 

Anne understood neither Wright’s strictures nor 
Thompson’s cynical defence. But she glowed with 
sympathetic triumph for Goss. The Orb in its white 
and gold cover greeted her from every bookstall, every 
bookseller’s window. The price was is. net. The an- 
nual subscribers at 2s. 6d. a copy, who had understood 
that the circulation was to be limited, and that on 
account of the halo of royalty cast about its ingenious 
editorial that it was to be as select as the royal en- 
closure at Ascot, not unnaturally grumbled or ex- 
pressed surprise. But Goss was not perturbed. 

“They’ve got their money’s worth; what are they 
grumbling at? If I choose to dispose of the first num- 
ber at a dead loss as an advertisement, it’s no affair 
of theirs.” 

Wright shrugged his shoulders; Thompson smiled. 

“Don’t worry; you’re getting your six pounds a 
week out of the shareholders, and I my ten. Don’t 
quarrel with your manna.” 

“You’ve no conscience, Thompson.” 

“On the contrary, it is regulated by my digestion. 
... It was an excellent dinner that Goss gave us last 
night at Romano’s.” 

Lady Helen sent ecstatically for Anne as soon as 
she had received her first number. She was a nominal 
subscriber, but had paid nothing, as she had can- 
vassed vigorously for the Orb in advance. Canvass- 
ers who brought in a dozen annual subscribers were 
entitled to be put on the free list for a year. 

“My dear, my article looks lovely. It has cost me 
about five pounds already in buying copies to send to 
people to read. I wish it had come out at Christmas 


THE LURE 


85 

time; it would have done instead of Christmas cards. 
Mr. Goss was quite flattering about it when I saw 
him. By the way, darling, do you know when contrib- 
utors are to be paid? I haven’t had a sou yet, either 
for the article or my editing.” 

Anne stifled a smile at the last word, though the 
paper open at the page headed “Edited by Lady Helen 
Moorhouse” lay on the sofa in a conspicuous position 
by her aunt’s pretty bare elbow. 

“I don’t know at all,” she said. “Of course, I get 
my salary every week — Mr. Wright deposits a funny 
little envelope about an inch square in front of me 
every Saturday morning. But editors are different — 
I’m only a journalist on the staff.” 

“I think Mr. Goss ought to give you a more im- 
portant position, really. I shall tell him so. ... Of 
course, I can’t ask him about the money; it wouldn’t 
be quite comfortable, would it; as we are on such a 
personal footing. Do you think it would be more 
business-like if I were to send the Orb a little bill. . . . 
I could copy the one that came this morning from 
Stephanie over on my desk.” 

She went to the escritoire, dashed off a formula 
on a blank sheet of paper, and read aloud — 

“‘11a, Hans Place, W. 

“ ‘May 5th. 

“ The Orb dr.’ — (what exactly does that stand for? 
I hate these vulgar abbreviations) ‘to Lady Helen 
Moorhouse.’ Fresh line: ‘For one article, May 1st 
. . . £50.’ Next line: ‘One year’s salary as editor 
. . . £200.’ Next line: ‘An early settlement will 
greatly favor . . .’ Dear me. I can’t put that. It 
is very impertinent of Stephanie to write it to an old 
customer. She knows I am safe, and I never buy a 
hat from her under five guineas. I paid her the 


86 


THE LURE 


Christmas before last, I remember perfectly well, be- 
cause it was so exorbitant. These milliners are abso- 
lute sharks! Well, what do you think ?” 

She fluttered the sheet aloft. 

“I don’t see how you can ask for a year’s salary 
when you have only had your name on the page five 
days,” replied Anne, decisively. 

Lady Helen’s angelic eyes clouded. 

“Of course not . . . how disagreeable! But there’s 
the article.” 

“I shouldn’t send a bill said Anne, doubtfully, 
who was herself ignorant of the etiquette on such 
occasions. “I should write a short formal note to the 
business manager, asking whether articles in this num- 
ber will be paid for at the end of the month.” 

“Anne, you are cleverness itself. I will, this very 
day! Don’t forget I have promised you half.” 

But the letter brought merely a brief and polite 
response. 

“The business manager presents his compliments 
to Lady Helen Moorhouse, and begs to inform her 
that she will receive payment for her article in due 
course.” 

“Hood gracious ! What does this mean ?” scribbled 
Lady Helen, forwarding it with a comment to Anne 
at the office. She underlined the last three words. 

“What does ‘payment in due course’ mean, Mr. 
Wright?” asked Anne, suddenly, for he happened to 
be in the office when the note arrived. 

Mr. Wright stroked his chin sardonically. 

“It means ... it means. Til pay you any old time 
that I choose, and it will be confounded impertinence 
on your part to bother me until then.’ Why?” 

“Oh,” said Anne, somewhat blankly. 

“In other words,” continued Mr. Wright, “it is 


THE LURE 87 

the system which the Orb will adopt towards those 
who expect dividends.” 

“I don’t think it is very loyal of you to talk like 
that, Mr. Wright,” said Anne. 

“I hope you haven’t any money in it?” 

“No.” 

“Then you haven’t anything to lose. As for loy- 
alty, I spoke a little too plainly to Goss yesterday, 
and the Orb will know me no more after this week. 
Let me give you some advice — don’t let a penny of 
your salary get overdue, claim all your expenses, and 
take everything that comes from headquarters with 
salt — by the hundredweight. I’ve looked to the first 
half up till now.” 

“I have no doubt that my salary is perfectly safe.” 
The telephone bell rang shrilly. 

Mr. Wright, vulgarity rampant, whistled before he 
took up the receiver. 


CHAPTER X 


A NNE was invited hurriedly by Goss, as he 
passed her on the stairs one morning, to the 
meeting of the Theatre-goers’ Club at the Cri- 
terion Restaurant on the following Sunday evening. 

“They’ve booked me to hold forth,” he explained, 
fumbling in a notebook for a card. “Bother, I’ve 
run short of tickets, but be fairly early and ask for me 
and I’ll pass you in. Or, better still, I’ll scribble a 
line on my visiting card which will admit you. Nine 
o’clock, sharp.” 

Anne accepted the invitation gladly, though Sunday 
was the day which she usually spent in quietness in 
the country, tramping through fields and woods and 
returning by a late train. She felt that she needed 
fresh air after the long office hours. The London 
season was in full swing, and she was kept busily 
rushing about the West End from function to func- 
tion by Mr. Thompson. A Miss Neville, imported in 
the last week of April during the rush, undertook all 
the more important society reporting for which long 
experience and knowledge of who’s who were essen- 
tial qualifications. Miss Neville knew everybody who 
was somebody by sight and by reputation, and had 
their family history, their idiosyncrasies and their 
scandals at her finger-ends. She took no particular 
interest in society doings and personalities; to her it 
was office routine and nothing else ; but Anne, still the 
apprentice, had the apprentice’s joy in her work, and 
eagerly stored up Miss Neville’s carelessly dropped 


THE LURE 


89 

pieces of information. Mr. Thompson found her, 
novice as she was, useful enough, and indefatigably 
industrious. 

Goss took little part in the daily arrangement of 
work; he occupied himself with the larger matters; 
indeed, of practical editing he had, according to Miss 
Neville, small real knowledge. Anne looked back- 
ward to her life at home as a half-life, a mere exist- 
ence. It seemed to her that for the first time she was 
moving about real living people. She was child enough 
to take all the glitter and pretensions of society at 
their face value. She loved the sound of great names, 
to see living celebrities and people whose names were 
associated with the modern history of the country. 
She loved to see women beautifully dressed, to enter 
into the variegated functions which make up the sea- 
son. It seemed to her that she was living in the light 
of all that was most brave and gay and gracious in 
the century, that the beaux and belles of the courts 
of Versailles or Charles II were merely reincarnated 
into a twentieth-century setting. Everything inter- 
ested her. If she went to an aeroplane meeting, the 
sight of the airmen thrilled her. To Miss Neville 
they were so many names, to be put into the day’s 
copy. To Anne they were demi-gods, the favored 
pioneers of a new era, heroes who were making the 
history of the future. It had always been character- 
istic of Anne as a child that she entered into games of 
make-believe with intense seriousness and realism, and 
she threw herself into her work with the same ardent 
enthusiasm. Her vitality and country-bred consti- 
tution carried her through a long programme of tiring 
functions and hot days in the office which would have 
tried an older woman. 

“Don’t do more than you need, Miss Moorhouse,” 
advised Miss Neville, flicking a half-burnt cigarette 


9 o 


THE LURE 


out of her amber holder into an ash-tray on her desk, 
as Anne brought her some closely-written sheets in 
order to have the names of celebrities checked by the 
elder woman’s infallible knowledge. “Think what 
you’ll look at thirty! And looks are as essential as 
brains in our profession, and good health more im- 
portant than either. What age are you? Eighteen? 
Nineteen?” 

“Twenty-three.” 

“You look less now, but you’ll look a good deal 
more by the end of the season, if you don’t take care. 
And at thirty you’ll be a worn-out old hag. I’m 
thirty-two and pass for thirty, thanks to great pains, 
but by the same token I should look at least forty if 
I sweated away like you, and probably be in an early 
decline. Yet, my dear, I’m worth my salary or they 
wouldn’t give it to me. You need never worry to 
hunt for work ; our friend Thompson will always allot 
you your share, you may be sure.” 

“But I love it,” said Anne. “Besides, I’m not like 
you ; I’m learning — you’re experienced. That’s all the 
difference. I want to be really capable like you.” 

“You’ll be that quite fast enough without wearing 
yourself to a shadow. You’re much too thin.” 

“I’ve always been thin and bony,” smiled Anne. 

“Don’t you worry, my child; that brain of yours 
is quite active enough to absorb all that you need at 
a normal rate. Don’t behave like an idiot and court 
a nervous breakdown. Anyway, you’re not fitted for 
this life, to look at you. You should marry some 
reliable man and settle down in the country and ride 
and play tennis and have lots of nice kiddies.” 

“Huh!” snorted Anne, with contempt. “And be- 
come a vegetable, just as I am beginning to see what 
work can do for a woman, and what independence 
means.” 


THE LURE 


9i 


“Oh, you see all that, do you?” She laughed. 

“You wouldn’t exchange your life for life in the 
country of the calling-cum-tennis-cum-baby order, 
would you?” asked Anne. 

“My dear, the tragedy is that I can’t if I would. 
I’ve got too used to the racket, and too jaded for do- 
mesticity. But you’re not, yet. And you have never 
dabbled in life from the emotional standpoint, yet. . . . 
What are you starting on now ?” 

“That report of Lady Charlotte’s,” Anne replied, 
lifting her head from her desk. “I wonder she had 
the cheek to send in such stuff. She might at least 
have gone through the spelling with a dictionary, and 
I shall have to cut at least half.” 

“She knows it will be re-written. Silly girl, don’t 
begin that now. We don’t send it in to the printers 
for a week.” 

“But Mr. Thompson ” 

“He’s given you all that he meant you to do to- 
day. You are an unnatural person, with your craving 
for work. Stop, and come to tea with me. I’m to 
meet a fervent suffragist, who’ll convert you. . . . 
Mr. Thompson,” — for that imperturbable person had 
just entered the room — “you’re making a white slave 
of Miss Moorhouse — and you must forbid her to do 
any more to-day. I want her to come out to tea with 
me.” 

“She goes out with my blessing. I’m not responsi- 
ble for slavery — Miss Moorhouse is voracious for 
work herself,” he said, gathering up a pile of proofs 
and fixing his eyeglass more securely. “I complained 
of her appetite for labor last night to our respected 
manager, Mr. Goss, and he made several remarks 
about Miss Moorhouse which I won’t repeat.” 

Anne flushed eagerly. 

“Did he say — does he think I’m improving?” 


9 2 


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“He’s found no fault, I assure you. He said you 
were one of the few women he’d ever met with the 
capacity for work.” The sub-editor did not add Goss s 
corollary, “and that’s because she’s still in the neuter 
phase, the flapper chrysalis stage.” And he had added 
some remarks about Anne’s personal appearance and 
possibilities which Mr. Thompson also suppressed. 

“Really? Then he is pleased.” 

“Oh, distinctly, distinctly.” He left the room with 
one of his cynical chuckles. 

“Goss has the all-conquering eye on you,” remarked 
Miss Neville, sending a cloud of smoke through her 
nose. “Beware, my child. You’re too young and 
nice to be added to the list of Gossifications.” 

Anne felt indignant. 

“He has been very good and kind to me. You 
are like all the rest, Miss Neville; you wilfully ignore 
his nice side. It is so easy to call people quacks and 
intriguers without seeing what they really are. He 
isn’t like any one else, and doesn’t do things like other 
people, and you all take it for granted that because 
of that he is nothing short of a villain.” 

“Good to you?” said Miss Neville with surprise. 
“How?” 

“Yes . . . he gave me my chance. I was a nobody; 
I had no experience like you, no recommenda- 
tions. . . .” 

“Fudge, my angel. He knew quite well what he 
was about when he engaged you. Besides, you’re not 
without what is termed charm, you silly child. Goss 
is human. And you’re a worker. That doesn’t prove 
him a philanthropist. It may even prove him a phil- 
anderer.” 

Then Anne told the story of Mrs. Reynolds, the 
tale losing nothing of its halo as it fell from her lips. 
Anne had the satisfaction of hearing Miss Neville 


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93 


concede that she hadn’t thought Goss capable of it. 

“But he had his audience, and a most appreciative 
one. I don’t put him down as a stage villain by any 
means. On the contrary, he’s capable of the matinee 
hero — provided the stalls are full. I hope I’m not 
unjust to him. I like him, mind you; I admire him 
— nevertheless, je m’ en mefie. But I mustn’t attempt 
to destroy a beautiful faith, so we’ll drop the subject.” 

Anne found herself in an upper room of the Cri- 
terion Restaurant at about 9.15. She knew no one, 
though she recognized a good many people by sight, 
two famous actor-managers and their wives, and vari- 
ous faces well known to playgoers and familiarized by 
picture-postcard publicity. Anne took pleasure in the 
game of picking out new faces and putting a name 
to them. In the further corner one well-known dra- 
matic critic yawned and stroked his chin; another, 
whose signature had appeared with regularity for al- 
most half a century in an important weekly, sat be- 
side a gray-haired lady. Here an impresario stood 
talking to the versatile discoverer of musical comedies 
and musical comedy stars. There, twiddling his 
thumbs and gazing into space, sat a light librettist, 
a grave man in glasses, not unlike a Norwegian phil- 
osopher, whose jingling rhymes had sounded in the 
ears of gilded youth as the burden of twenty years of 
popular ditties. 

Presently Anne espied Mrs. Goss, dressed with that 
subtle bad taste which distinguished her — like an ani- 
mated wet blanket, Anne thought — a generally hostile 
and defensive look in her hard though beautiful eyes. 
Just behind her walked a tall youth with sandy hair 
and vacant expression. She bowed slightly to Anne 
in passing, and took seats with her companion in the 
row of chairs just in front. A good many people, 


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especially women, paused to speak to her. No one 
addressed the sandy-haired youth, though he stared 
at them whenever they stopped beside Mrs. Goss. 

“So anxious to hear your husband to-night. . . .” 
“He’s such a brilliant speaker. . . .” “We’re sure 
of something amusing. . . “I hear your husband 
is in great vein to-night, Mrs. Goss — at dinners 
he ” and so forth. 

Presently Lady Esmeralda Heding came in, lan- 
guidly gorgeous, a little haggard for all her good 
looks, as if her constitution were not quite equal to 
the strain she put upon it during the gaieties of the 
season. Anne wondered if she would stop, too. 

She did. 

“Such an interesting subject, Mrs. Goss,” she said, 
in her lazy, carrying voice. 

“Is it true that they’ve quarrelled?” said a woman 
beside Anne to her neighbor. 

“The Heding and Goss? Not that I know of.” 

“But I thought that that American widow, Mrs. 
Van Diep ” 

“Oh, my dear! Goss isn’t undivided in his alle- 
giance to any woman. But then — he’s Goss and per- 
fectly charming.” 

Anne experienced an odd feeling of anger. Was 
it true about Lady Esmeralda? She disliked the look 
of that beautiful and lackadaisical woman intensely. 

To her relief, the next person to come in was Miss 
Neville. 

“I expected to find you here,” said the young 
woman, “among the Goss-worshippers.” 

“You’re among them, too.” 

“Not I! I’m writing this up. It’s a good sub- 
ject.” 

“What is the subject?” 

Miss Neville handed her a card. “The Attitude of 


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95 

Modern Drama Towards the Family as a Social 
Unit.” 

“Oh,” said Anne. 

“What makes Goss interesting as a speaker is the 
way he gets off the subject,” said Miss Neville, open- 
ing a small notebook surreptitiously on her knee. “He 
has a faculty for saying brilliant things in an entirely 
irrelevant way. One is so dazzled by the brilliance 
that one forgets to think whether they are a propos. 

. . . Oh, there’s Lady Esmeralda Heding. What a 
frock! She knows how to dress. But she has a 
neck. . . . Mrs. Goss has a genius in the other direc- 
tion. With all her money, too.” 

“Has she money?” 

“Pots of it. Hence Goss, so people say. But I’ve 
heard he can’t touch it while she’s alive, and after 
her death it goes to her son.” 

“Goss has a son!” exclaimed Anne, in surprise. 

“Lord, no — by her first husband, I mean. He’s a 
terrible creature, the son, wanting in intellect, they 
say, poor thing. She hardly stirs without him. They 
say she’s devoted to him. He’s with her now; that 
tall, fair, stupid-looking boy with his mouth open.” 

“Then she was a widow?” 

“Yes, of course. . . . What do you think of the 
lovely Lady Esmeralda ?” 

“I don’t like her,” replied Anne, candidly. 

“Of course not, silly child; you’re a Goss adorer.” 

“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,” Anne said, 
reddening. “It is so silly.” 

“You sweet baby — I was only teasing. But don’t 
get too interested; that’s all. It’s playing with fire.” 

Goss entered as she spoke, accompanied by a well- 
known and genial Jewish manager, who was chair- 
man for the evening. 

“Hermann!” said Miss Neville. “Heavens, I can 


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96 

hardly see a Gentile face in the room. I hope Mr. 
Goss will refer to the ordinances of the Talmud. . . . 
Jews after all are the only nation who understand the 
word family, and they run the English stage, so there 
is a connection.” 

At last they were going to begin. Hermann deliv- 
ered his smooth and complimentary introductory 
speech, which was scarcely needed, as he remarked, 
in the case of Mr. Huntly Goss, who was so well 
known to members of the club. It was with the cer- 
tainty that they would not be bored that they had come 
together in such large numbers — he assured Mr. Goss 
that this did not represent the average attendance 
during the season! Mr. Goss was himself neither a 
dramatic critic nor a playwright nor an actor. He 
spoke, so to speak, from the stalls. 

“From a box ” interjected Goss. 

“From the house, at all events,” amended Hermann, 
and after a few more remarks he sat down. 

Goss began by declaring that he had just now cor- 
rected Mr. Hermann because in his own experience, 
whenever he had telephoned to that generous mana- 
ger for seats, which he had occasionally presumed to 
do, he was usually accommodated with the royal box. 
Our present sovereign stood for all that was most 
domestic in the British nation; the papers had de- 
lighted to dwell on the home life of the palace, to 
hold up to public admiration the king pere-de-famille. 
An occasion on which he had been the spectator of a 
very modern play dealing with social problems, from 
the box dedicated to such an august representative of 
the family as a social unit, had, as a matter of fact, 
suggested to him the few remarks which he intended 
to make this evening, at the risk of boring the audi- 
ence which had rashly met together to hear him. As 
Mr. Hermann had said, he was neither playwright 


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97 


nor actor, hence the professional point of view from 
which he approached the subject could only be that 
of the family man, that is to say, the man who has 
incurred the responsibilities and disabilities enjoined 
by the matrimonial yoke. There was a ripple of 
laughter in the room. It was delightfully funny to 
hear Goss, the professional flaneur , whose domestic 
infidelity was notorious, speak in this vein. But he 
was perfectly grave as he continued. He would like 
to begin by pointing out one vast truth which escaped 
the notice of most English people, as far as he knew. 
That truth was that in England, alone among Euro- 
pean nations, the family as a social unit was rapidly 
becoming extinct. The Englishman was losing the 
family instinct, indeed he might say had already lost 
it. We had lulled ourselves into the agreeable belief 
that we were the most domestic nation in Europe by 
the soothing catchwords “English home” and “Eng- 
lish family-life,” but as a matter of fact they had be- 
come symbols of obsolete institutions without our no- 
ticing the fact. With equal insular complacency, we 
settled at least two centuries ago that our allies across 
the channel were incapable of such institutions. There 
were very few Englishmen who, on hearing the word 
Paris, did not immediately conjure up a paradise, 
should he say? of all the elements which war against 
domesticity, a pleasant and gay inferno where hus- 
bands habitually deceived their wives with the most 
delightful of frail ladies, and wives, slaves to a uni- 
versal fashion, obeyed a social decree which made one 
lover by the hearth a matter of convention. Paris, in 
a word, to the English middle classes, stood for all 
that was opposed to the family with a big F, a city 
where one went if one’s domestic conscience wanted 
a holiday. 

Now, how much truth was there in all this? Let 


THE LURE 


98 

us see. Go into those historical haunts, Maxim’s, the 
Folies Bergeres, the Moulin Rouge, the Rat Mort, and 
what language greets your ears? English or Ameri- 
can. The very respectable and convenable ladies who 
represented the oldest profession at these places of 
amusement, had before now confessed to him that 
they had not infrequently been shocked, yes, shocked! 
by the manners of their English clientele. The French 
pere-de-famille, if he transgressed his marriage vows, 
did so in a humdrum, unostentatious way that by no 
means upset the equilibrium of his household or in- 
terfered with his affectionate respect for and dutiful 
conduct to his wife and children. 

The Englishman or the American, on the other 
hand, could not as a rule deceive his wife without 
being rude and neglectful to her. As a Frenchman 
had once remarked to him, the Englishman treats his 
wife as a mistress, and when he ceases to be faithful, 
as a cast-off mistress. It was left to the Frenchman 
to kiss his wife tenderly, call her his chere amie, em- 
brace his children and feed the canary before he went 
off to a discreet rendezvous with Robinette or Loulou 
round the corner. He never lost either his politeness 
or his sense of family duty. He was essentially the 
family man. Whereas, he asked his audience to read 
the divorce cases, to listen to club gossip and to look 
at their friends, and then to decide if the Englishman 
or American came up to that standard. 

“I will leave Germany out of the question/' Goss 
went on, “for the present — no one has ever doubted 
the domesticity of the Teuton, but then he is a blood 
relation, if an unpopular one. It is the Latin races 
who are most maligned by us. 

“Now as to the Frenchman pere-de-famille. There 
is no father in the world with a higher responsibility 
towards his offspring. He plans the future of his 


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99 


children minutely ; he is far more affectionate to them 
than most English fathers — I mean in fact as well as 
demonstration — he makes their financial and social 
position his chief care. He does not, like the English 
father, pitchfork his daughters into the world, or die 
after they have spent their best years in attendance 
on his elderly whims without leaving them a penny to 
earn their living or the least equipment. No — he pro- 
vides each one with a suitable dot , and if it is possi- 
ble, with a sober, respectable, kindhearted husband. 
The sons are expected to marry a girl calculated to 
be a thrifty and affectionate partner. Their elders aid 
them in the search. Thus marriage is often a step 
forward in a young man’s career instead of the full 
stop put to it by an ill-considered match. We leave 
our sons and daughters to their own whims and fan- 
cies; they usually fall in love with the wrong type of 
young man or woman — we do not consider it part of 
a father’s duties to bring them into touch with the 
right type — and the result of this entirely accidental 
combination of such forces as calf love, chance, or 
lack of choice is in nine cases out of ten a disastrous 
marriage. 

“And the French family hang together. It is a 
unit. When the eldest son goes to make his service 
militaire, what a scene! Papa and mamma embrace 
him a hundred times, his sisters weep, his brothers kiss 
him — and he writes and receives weekly such affec- 
tionate epistles as an English school-boy would blush 
to handle. This close bond of affection is never loos- 
ened; even after marriage the young man is as closely 
attached to his parents as before, and shares with 
them his joys and troubles, and he theirs. 

“In England and America what happens? The 
boys and girls go to boarding-schools; they see very 
little of their parents during their childhood. They 


100 


THE LURE 


go out into the world; they see still less. Their in- 
terests drift apart. There are very few sons and 
daughters over twenty-five who have remained on 
really intimate terms with their families. Often they 
lost sight of their people altogether. The young man 
marries, the girl has a career, and her mother cannot 
be expected to know anything of her children’s world. 
They float into other social circles, into other envir- 
onments. They lose touch altogether. Such letters 
as the members of the family write to one another 
are more or less duty letters. 

“Take another instance — our growing habit of en- 
tertaining at restaurants ; our hatred of being by our- 
selves in the family circle. I know people who have 
not dined tete-a-tete for years. If they do, it is a 
hurried meal before going on somewhere else — to a 
theatre, or a dance, or something of the sort. 

“And the French wife. Believe me, the amant is 
largely a figment of our uncharitable imagination. He 
exists, certainly, but chiefly in the richest classes. I 
don’t think that our society women are altogether im- 
peccable. There is less frankness about it, certainly, 
and that may stand for a virtue with those whose 
morality is of a head-buried-in-the-sand order. But 
the large proportion of French meres-de-famille — I 
prefer that designation because we have no equiva- 
lent, materfamilias having a burlesque signification 
— has no time for him — for the amant. She is taken 
up with the domestic circle of her house, with econ- 
omies of the most rigorous and minute order (there 
is the future of the children, the launching of Pierre, 
the dot of Marie to be thought of). What are women 
of the same class — the upper middle class — doing in 
England? Living up to every penny their husbands 
earn, seldom condescending to occupy themselves with 
their households further than ordering the meals and 


THE LURE 


IOI 


directing their servants, often inadequately; aspiring 
to a social position immediately above their own, rush- 
ing round to suffrage meetings, spending money in 
tea-shops and subscriptions to lending libraries, press- 
ing their husbands to live above their incomes. The 
children? well, if the girls and boys are sent to school, 
and the eldei sons to the university, the English 
mother thinks that her parental duty is finished. The 
children must look after themselves. 

“It is even more marked in the lower classes, as 
compared with the lower classes of France. The 
frugal housewife you see in France goes to market 
herself, her neatly dressed hair without a hat, man- 
ages her cuisine, husbands her money; while her sis- 
ter in England aspires to a slovenly servant and dresses 
like a shoddy imitation of last year’s toilettes. The 
frugal housewife before mentioned puts aside a com- 
fortable sum every year; the married woman of the 
same class in England rarely makes two ends meet. 

“Now, you may fairly ask, what has all this long 
comparison of French and English family life to do 
with the drama? 

“A great deal. I have tried to prove to you that 
England is fast losing its family as a social unit. 
Incidentally I may remark that the present Govern- 
ment is doing its best to destroy the family sense in 
the poorest classes by removing to a large extent the 
parental responsibilities of feeding, clothing, educat- 
ing, and training children, and transferring them to 
the State. I am ill-informed as to the lengths to 
which the State already goes, but I believe it includes 
free breakfasts, free baths, free toothbrushes, free 
education, free clubs, free medical advice, free medi- 
cine, free artificial food for babies, free nursing — and 
so on. All this is excellent, no doubt. I shall dwell 
on its possibilities later on. But it is another stab at 


102 


THE LURE 


those eminent institutions, the home and the family. 
The point I should like to raise is: Are they worth 
the keeping? Does modern drama reflect this state 
of things with favorable or unfavorable comment? Is 
it really a lamentable decay, or a condition incident 
upon progress? 

“Let us take such plays of the last five years as 
have dealt with the decay of the family. Perhaps 
you will not recognize some of them at first sight as 
treating of this phase of social life. . . 

Anne listened, fascinated, to his clever analysis of 
one play after another. It seemed to be his project 
to prove that while they mirrored more or less un- 
consciously the condition of society to which he had 
referred, these plays were singularly and unintelli- 
gently helpless to offer the spectator any solution of 
the problems they suggested. We had no Moliere, 
chastising with a light hand the follies of the time, 
at the same time labelling them follies. We had a 
number of dramatists, such as Mr. Pinero, who, with 
somewhat heavy and photographic art, faithfully rep- 
resented the state of things, from an entirely subject- 
ive standpoint. . . . 

What puzzled Anne was that beneath all his de- 
ploratory tone, there was an under-note of mockery, 
of cynicism, in all that Goss had said, as if he were 
sneering at his own statements. 

Then came the climax. He proved, apparently, that 
the Latin races were more or less at a political stand- 
still. It was said that the political future of the world 
lay in the hands of two great Anglo-Saxon races. 
There could be no progress without change, no change 
without other disintegration. It was possible that the 
disintegration of the family as a social unit might 
lead to a greater harmony and unity of class interests ; 


THE LURE 


103 


a harmony unfortunately threatened by the unintelli- 
gent revolutionism which was convulsing England at 
present. . . . We saw the family go with regret. 
Progress was inevitably attended by vulgarity, old 
institutions guillotined to the accompaniment of the 
cackle and shouting of mobs of undesirable persons. 
Progress trampled romance under foot. Progress had 
a red face and an uncultured accent. But we had 
to bow before that crushing advance. If the progress 
of the great Anglo-Saxon race lay in a social devel- 
opment in which the family had no place, well and 
good. . . . “I’ve ceased to follow his argument,” 
whispered Anne. “Is he being sarcastic? I thought 
he always considered England in a state of deca- 
dence.” 

“Bless you, he doesn’t argue; he only talks,” said 
Miss Neville. “At the end of the lecture the women 
will think it wonderful and the men gammon. . . . 
He’s harking back to the drama now. . . . ‘Anxious 
to hear the playwright prescribe as well as diagnose, 
if he regards the decay of the family as an unhealthy 
symptom in family life.’ . . . Good gracious. . . . 
Well. . . . there’s the end, anyhow. I shall have to 
make something out of it somehow.” 

Goss had finished, and there was a buzz of com- 
ment, then a short and spirited discussion bearing on 
the subject in hand. 

“My dear, the one thing that you must grasp about 
Goss from the start is that he has no opinions. He 
is immorally without them. No man has a right to 
go through the world without the decency of a few. I 
tell you, Goss is capable of crime, which he would per- 
form in an artistic way and argue himself right or 
wrong as he pleased afterwards. Intellectually, he is 
a cold-blooded wretch; a living paradox.” 


CHAPTER XI 


A NNE noticed that Mrs. Goss and her son went 
off as soon as the lecture was over without 
waiting to speak to her husband, who was 
several ladies deep. Lady Esmeralda sat on in a 
chair near the door with an increasingly sulky look on 
her face. She invariably wore an expression of grace- 
ful discontent in repose. She exchanged a languid 
word or two with various people she knew as they 
passed her on the way out, her smile at once ridding 
her of the lines of ill-humor. She had a marvellously 
expressive face, Anne thought. What wonder if Goss 
were in love with her. Yet Anne felt resentment at 
the thought, while she looked at the older woman with 
the curiosity of a girl for the woman with a past, a 
curiosity that was part envy. Here was a woman 
who had raised the cup of forbidden things boldly to 
her lips, and society was far from closing its doors 
on her even after the publicity of the divorce courts. 
Moreover, she had for acknowledged knight and ador- 
er Huntly Goss, that sardonic Olympian, the man 
whose lightest compliment had the power to raise Anne 
to a dizzy pinnacle. What had Lady Esmeralda done ? 
to what lengths had she gone? Was it true that men 
of the world found women who had lived and thought 
and acted as they listed more interesting than women 
who lived according to convention? Anne thought 
of the women of history, the women whose individ- 
ualities had left lasting impressions. There was 
scarcely one who had not done as Lady Esmeralda, 
104 


THE LURE 


105 

and successfully defied social law in one fashion or 
another. 

Yet others were simply labelled infamous. What 
was the meaning between infamy and dull convention? 
Did it lie in personality, or in courage, or in individ- 
uality apart from character? 

Her bewildered surmising was cut short by Goss, 
who excused himself a moment and came to where 
Anne was waiting while Miss Neville collected her 
notes. 

“Are you in a hurry, Miss Moorhouse? I want to 
ask you to do something for me if you will be so 
kind — I’ll explain as soon as I can get off.” 

“No, I’m not in a hurry.” 

He returned once more to the group he had left. 

“If you’re not, I am, because I have left my latch- 
key behind,” said Miss Neville. “Au revoir, till to- 
morrow. Be a good child.” 

Anne waited patiently, taking a seat close by the 
door near Lady Esmeralda, who was showing lively 
signs of discontentment. Her raised eyebrows, shut 
eyes and tapping foot were testimony. 

At last Goss moved towards the door, his eye ab- 
sently fixed on Anne. Lady Esmeralda intercepted 
him. 

“My dear Huntly, I thought you were never com- 
ing. Why did you stay talking so long to those tire- 
some frumps? We are half an hour late for Betty’s 
as it is.” 

“I couldn’t be rude,” answered Goss, coolly. “Sor- 
ry, but you know these things are inevitable after a 
show like this.” 

* “The motor’s waiting downstairs.” 

“One minute — I simply must speak to Miss Moor- 
house on a matter of business; she has been kind 
enough to wait for that purpose.” 


io 6 


THE LURE 


Lady Esmeralda’s eyes fell on Anne. “You can 
surely leave business till to-morrow,” she exclaimed, 
petulantly, in a tone which she did not scruple to lower. 
“Do you mean to come at all?” 

“Of course . . . I’ll tell you what I will do,” Goss 
replied in a conciliatory voice which reached Anne 
nevertheless. “We’ll take Miss Moorhouse with us 
in the motor — I can explain in five minutes — we can 
drop her at her own door by making the slightest 
detour, and there’ll be no delay at all. You know 
her, Lady Moorhouse’s niece.” 

Lady Esmeralda set her somewhat thick eyebrows 
in a straight line. 

“Really, Huntly! I absolutely refuse,” she said, 
like an exasperated child. “You treat me without 
the slightest consideration. You either come now, 
alone; or I go alone. You have kept me waiting 
more than half an hour. You are always keeping me 
waiting. ... If you think that I am accustomed ” 

“Certainly not,” said Goss, ice in an instant. “I 
won’t detain you an instant longer. But this business 
is imperative. You behave like a petulant baby.” 

She hardly believed her ears, Anne saw, accustomed 
as she was to command men rather than obey. Her 
voice became haughty, her eyes hard. 

“You said you would come. I’ve waited for ages.” 

“My dear girl, I’ve waited for you before now. 
You had better go, unless we take Miss Moorhouse 
with us. Be reasonable. I’ll tell her to come along. 
. . . She has only stayed to convenience me.” 

“So have I.” 

“Well — we can all go together.” 

“I really don’t see why I should be bored with 
business ” 

“Then there’s nothing more to be said.” 

She turned white with anger. 


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107 


“Say you won’t come ” 

He lifted his eyebrows. “If you like to phrase it 
so ” 

She rose without another word, storm in her very 
calm, and left the room. 

Goss came forward to Anne. 

“Sorry I’ve been so long,” he said shortly. “It’s 
good of you to stay.” 

Anne felt and looked eminently uncomfortable and 
unhappy. She did not appreciate being, however tem- 
porarily, the bone of contention between these two. 

He smiled. “I am afraid you overheard a slight 
difference of opinion. Don’t let that worry you. Lady 
Esmeralda Heding is not the most reasonable of beings 
at times.” 

The chilly voice in which he spoke of her, surprised 
Anne. 

‘But you’ve offended her . . . more or less because 
of me.” 

“My dear child, that doesn’t perturb me in the least. 

. . . Now I’ll explain what I want you to do as we go 
home. . . . Have you ever been to a T.G. evening 
before ?” 

“Never ... I was very interested.” 

“Good. ... I thought it might amuse you to hear 
me defending the great British myth.” 

“But you attacked it,” said she. 

“Did I? I really forget.” 

He explained to her briefly in the cab what he 
wanted her to do. She was to go the next morning 
at nine o’clock, before she went to the office, to X 
House in Piccadilly, where she would take down cer- 
tain memoranda in shorthand from the dictation of 
a certain great lady. “It was the only way I could 
get her to consent to give me anything. I couldn’t 
send any one else — an ordinary stenographer would 


io8 


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be impossible. She may take to you, and you had 
better play the ingenue with her — you oughtn’t to 
find that difficult, draw her out without seeming to 
ask any questions . . . tactfully . . . assuming ignor- 
ance of journalism. . . . I’ve not told her that you’re 
on the staff . . . remember she’s eccentric. I want to 
get at what she really thinks about the business. Don’t 
make her any promises as to secrecy, or if you do, 
make them with a mental reservation. . . . We shall 
steer clear of libel actions all right, in any case. Now 
do you understand?” 

“I will do my best,” said Anne, who felt extremely 
nervous about the whole proceeding. “I hope I shall 
be able to get what you want. But you won’t be dis- 
appointed if ” 

“Nonsense, dear child, you must, you must! I’ve 
got confidence in you. Now I would sooner trust to 
your instinct and your tact in this than Miss Neville’s 
experience.” 

“I wish you’d ask her,” said Anne with real fervor. 

“Well, I don’t. And incidentally, it has saved me 
a boring evening. I didn’t want to go out to-night.” 

Imperceptibly, he had come nearer to her. Her 
pure profile, and the line from her chin to her flat 
young bosom, attractive by reason of its very virginal 
immaturity, affected him strongly, like the purfume 
of a rare and perfect flower. The May air carried 
with it the intoxication of the season of swift im- 
pulses. He put his arm about her surprised and re- 
sisting figure, and kissed her on the throat. 

Anne uttered a cry, and became crimson. 

“Forgive me, forgive me. ... I couldn’t help it. 
Don’t take me too seriously, Lady Lavender. But I 
am the least little bit more in love with you than I 
should be — than it is comfortable to be. It is diffi- 
cult — you needn’t be afraid of me, dear! I swear I 


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109 


won’t touch you if you don’t want me to. Now you 
are angry with me? Very angry? What was I say- 
ing — why, that it was difficult to help being caught 
off one’s guard when one is sitting just beside you, you 
delicious lady of the stars. I can see Jupiter there, 
behind your right ear; you’ve a setting of stars for 
that pretty throat. Lady Lavender, I’m sorry. I’m 
sorry. I’m sorry. Forgive me; there’s a good girl. 
Will you?” 

“Yes,” she said, in a stifled voice. The rush of 
feeling that had overtaken her was so new and strange 
that she, child as she was, and unaccustomed to read 
that perverse thing, her own heart, was bewildered. 
His tone of half-pathetic, half-absurd penitence, his 
surrender like any school-boy caught pilfering, had 
taken the edge from her resentment, though, to her 
own surprise, tears had sprung to her eyes. She was 
more deeply ashamed of them, and of her own confu- 
sion, than angry with him for the offence. 

“Am I really forgiven ? Will you look at me again, 
and smile at me?” 

“Yes . . . that is . . . but . . . you won’t do it 
again.” 

“I won’t . . . only reverently, as suits you, Lady 
Lavender.” 

He took her hands and kissed the finger-tips, then 
let his lips stray to her wrist. 

A languor, a pleasure in his touch assailed her 
senses in spite of herself. She drew her hand away 
with a strong effort of will and desperate regaining 
of her assailed modesty. She knew that she should 
feel resentment, yet the fact that he, whom she had 
unwittingly set up as an idol, if conscious of his feet 
of clay, should pay homage to her, lose his empire 
over himself for her, filled her with the most delicious 
and illicit triumph. 


no 


THE LURE 


Of his own accord Goss moved abruptly further 
into his corner, leaned back, and without asking her 
permission, lit a cigarette. 

“When you know more of the tendencies of that 
aboriginal man, Lady Lavender,” he said, gazing seri- 
ously into the street, “you will wonder that I have not 
kissed you before now. I could count at least a hun- 
dred separate occasions when I have had a desire to 
do so. You must count that to my credit. . . 

She sat silent. 

“If temptations resisted are weighed in the balance 
with temptations yielded to, I have quite a respectable 
credit to my name. ... You have a curiously uncom- 
fortable effect on me.” 

He waited, as if expecting an answer. 

“Have I?” she said, smiling. “I am sorry for that.” 

“Tell me one thing, little girl,” he said, suddenly. 
“Remember I’m much older than you, so you needn’t 
mind — even a kiss, if you consider the years between 
us. On your lily-white honor, dear Lady Lavender 
— you haven’t been kissed much, have you?” 

“Much?” she repeated, surprised, and blushing scar- 
let. “I have never been kissed by any one but father 
and Tony — any . . . man, I mean. ... Of course, 
not.” 

“Not even at those dances?” 

“Of course not,” she repeated in swift indignation. 

“Then I am the first who has dared ” 

“Please do not talk of it,” she exclaimed in distress. 

“But I like to!” 

“I want to forget ” 

“Was it so unpleasant, little girl?” 

He leant forward and spoke in a very soft and 
mocking voice, a voice that put this girl on the verge 
of womanhood, who had given him her loyal young 
heart without knowing she had done so, into a panic 


THE LURE 


hi 


because of the tumult it caused her. It was the voice 
of the enchanter, the pipe of the charmer, the old note 
to which the feet of heedless virgins have responded 
since Eve plucked the apple, as the children of Hame- 
line to the appeal of the Pied Piper. 

He caught the alarm in the eyes that she was try- 
ing to make indifferent, and content with what he had 
gained, drew back again to his corner, to resume his 
cigarette. To the end of her life, Anne remembered 
how she watched the pulsating glow at the end of the 
cigarette; fascinated, dumb, while he, smiling and ap- 
parently pleased, talked of other matters. To the end 
of her life she remembered the smell of the smoke 
as it floated across to her, the faint staleness of the 
streets, the purer breath brought from the distant 
fields and woods by the warm May breeze, the throb 
of the taxi, as it leapt forward, the swift beating of 
her own pulses. . . . 

And when he left her, it was with the cool, polite 
good-night of one who is entirely master of himself. 
He did not even call her Lady Lavender. 


CHAPTER XII 


r 

A NNE had never spent a more troubled night 
than that which followed the night of Goss’s 
lecture. A kind of delicious shame, a warm 
horror, overspread her at the remembrance of certain 
phrases : “at least a hundred separate occasions when 
I have had a desire to kiss you,” or “I am more in love 
with you than is comfortable.” 

Yet she was furious with herself for thinking of 
them, for dwelling on them. Goss and she could have 
nothing in common. He was not her property. Me- 
chanically she had taken it for granted — not that he 
belonged to his wife — that unattractive figure, with 
the appendage of an imbecile son, but that he belonged 
to Lady Esmeralda. Lady Esmeralda had the royal 
right of annexation. She had disdained the opinion 
of the world. She had allowed it to be publicly af- 
firmed that they two belonged to each other. How- 
ever much it hurt to acknowledge the fact, he was hers 
by the divine law of appropriation, as Paolo belonged 
to the erring Francesca, as Beatrice belonged to Dante, 
as Charles II belonged to Nell Gwynn, as all lovers 
belong to each other who have made their confession 
of devotion in the eyes of all men. There were divin- 
er rights than those of matrimony. 

Therefore, Anne told herself plainly that Goss could 
not, in loyalty to the older flame, give her (Anne) 
any love that was worthy of him or herself. It did 
not occur to her to see anything humorous in the sit- 
uation; the comedy of these romantic and naively 
1 12 


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113 

amoral musings naturally escaped her. She recog- 
nized that he had obeyed a passing impulse in making 
love to her. Common sense told her that men were 
subject to such irresponsible waves of passing fancy. 
For that, she adored him well enough to forgive him. 
He was sufficiently the great man, the demigod, to 
be assigned the larger and easier code of Olympus. 
Even if the nymph might not dally with Apollo, 
Apollo might dally with the nymph. 

He had a genuine liking for her, yes, she was sure 
of that; but he did not consider her seriously in the 
light of The Woman. To a girl of Anne’s pride that 
could be the only position that justified these things. 
What made her so angry with herself was the impish 
way in which her memory, reverting to last night, 
enacted again and again the kiss that had thrilled her 
being 

Finally, she cried into her pillow, and this calming 
the fever that raged in her nerves, she fell asleep just 
before six o’clock. 

She awoke late, and realizing suddenly as conscious- 
ness after her white night, was chiefly absorbed in 
an hour before she was due at X House, she dressed 
in a frantic hurry, and, swallowing a cup of coffee 
without eating any breakfast, and stuffing a letter 
that had come for her into her handbag without read- 
ing it, she ran out to the nearest cab-stand and jumped 
into a taxi. 

It drew up at X House at the stroke of nine ; never- 
theless, she was kept waiting half an hour before the 
great lady sent for her. Anne, all nerves and weari- 
ness returned that there was only three-quarters of 
anxiously wondering whether she would be able to 
carry through her mission successfully. After last 
night, it would be peculiarly humiliating to have to 
confess to a failure. If she were to be valuable to 


THE LURE 


114 

Goss in one way only, that of a competent journalist, 
she must prove her value up to the hilt. 

It was half-past ten when she came away. She 
had been, on the whole, more successful than she had 
dared to hope. The great lady had been sufficiently 
gracious ; indeed, she had been touched by the anxious 
nervousness in the girl’s eyes. She had demanded no 
promises, but had given her views on a certain delicate 
question with comparative freedom and conciseness. 
It was all of it excellent copy. As a matter of fact, 
she had private ends to gain by giving publicity to 
what Buckingham Palace wished kept in secrecy. 
Goss had traded on this, but had had no idea as to 
what extent she was willing to meet him. She had 
only stipulated that her name should be excluded en- 
tirely, and to this he had agreed. As the affair, which 
concerned an international scandal, does not vitally 
touch this history, it need not be referred to in greater 
detail. 

Anne was exultant, therefore, when she left. The 
affair of last night began to assume normal propor- 
tions, and even took on an unreal aspect. Her appe- 
tite returned with her good spirits and she determined 
to get a belated breakfast in Piccadilly. She sat down 
to toast and eggs with youthful hunger, having depos- 
ited her fat little notebook in her bag. It was not 
until she had finished her second egg that she sud- 
denly remembered the unopened letter. It was in an 
unfamiliar handwriting, and the postmark was Aider- 
shot. As soon as she had spread the sheet out beside 
her, Anne gave a little start of surprise. 

“Dear Miss Moorhouse, 

“You will not know me by name. I want to see 
you about urgent business in connection with your 


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115 


brother. I shall arrive at Waterloo Station at 11.35. 
Please meet me if you can; otherwise I shall go 
straight to the Waldorf Hotel and wait there. 

“Yours truly, 

“(Mrs.) Isabel Watson.” 

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Anne. She glanced 
at the clock. It was five minutes to eleven already. 
There was very little time to consider. She had set 
about the office business an hour and a half before 
office hours, and on many occasions had stayed over- 
time before now. There could be small objection to 
her spending an hour on her own business, when that 
business was of a pressing nature. Goss had men- 
tioned no specified moment for her return with the 
notes. Still, in any case, she would telephone through 
at once and get permission. Ascertaining that there 
was a telephone, she went to it, and rang up the Orb. 

“Is ” She hesitated. For whom should she 

ask ? Goss, obviously. 

“Is Mr. Goss there? I’m Miss Moorhouse; put me 
through to his private office, please.” 

There was a moment’s interval, and then Goss’s 
voice. “Yes, who is it?” 

“I, Miss Moorhouse. ... I have just come back 
from X House.” 

“Yes, yes . . . I’m in a hurry . . . well, success- 
ful?” 

“Fairly . . . but I should like to know if you 
wanted the copy at once.” 

“Of course, of course.” 

“Because, if an hour didn’t matter, I have been 
asked to go to Waterloo on some private affairs ” 

“Sorry, but it’s impossible. I want to see the copy 
immediately.” 

His tone was curt and business-like. 


1 1 6 


THE LURE 


Anne, who had flushed scarlet as she heard his 
voice at the other end of the wire, was stung into in- 
stant composure. 

“Very well/’ was all that she said, and rang off. 

If he wished to show her that they were to be on 
formal terms, as before last night, she asked for 
nothing better. She could be as curt and business- 
like as he pleased ; he need fear nothing on that score. 

It was in this soreness at being misunderstood that 
she sent in the notes by the office-boy. He returned. 

“Mr. Goss would like to see you, miss.” 

She went in. 

“You wanted to see me?” 

“Yes — about this.” He indicated the notes. “Will 
you dictate them to Miss Minns on the typewriter, 
please?” 

“Yes.” 

“You had no difficulty? Tell me what happened.” 

She told him in as few words as possible. 

He smiled. “Capital.” 

Then he looked at her with less business in his eye. 
“Again, capital ! You need not doubt yourself.” 

Anne made no comment except — 

“I will dictate it in full to Miss Minns now.” 

“Yes, please. I feel very keen to have it in my 
hands. ... You rang off in a great hurry just now. 
I wanted to ask you if your business was pressing?” 

“No, thanks, I can manage it at lunch.” 

He gave her a piercing look, and then turned over 
his papers. 

“Go when you have dictated the notes, if that suits 
you better. I can read them, and consult you about 
them later. You will be back in the office this after- 
noon ?” 

“Of course,” said Anne, hostility creeping into her 
voice. 


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117 


“Very well ... as you please.” 

There was the slightest smile on his clean-shaven 
lips as he turned to his correspondence. 

Anne left the room with a heart that beat irregu- 
larly and fast, whether with rage or emotion she 
could not tell. There was nothing at which she could 
cavil reasonably. She had herself decided that a 
strictly and inexorably business-like attitude must be 
maintained; but to find him adopting the very atti- 
tude she had planned, and carrying through his role 
with such complacent ease, piqued her in spite of her 
soberer judgment. She told herself that she almost 
hated him, and took pleasure in the repetition. 

At a quarter to one she hurried off towards the 
Waldorf Hotel, where she asked for Mrs. Watson. 
She was conducted to the ladies’ drawing-room. In 
one corner a very small, fair-haired woman sat in a 
large arm-chair at the writing-table. 

“Miss Moorhouse,” announced the waiter, and hur- 
ried off again. 

The little woman turned round, rising quickly. 
Anne had time to notice that a damp ball of a hand- 
kerchief fell from her hand as she did so, and that 
her eyes were reddened. The lids were swollen; the 
upturned nose was pink and shiny. She had the air 
of a child who has cried itself sick. 

“Are you Miss Moorhouse ?” she began with a gulp. 
“I am so glad you have come ... it was very kind 
of you ... I was afraid you wouldn’t. . . . I’ve just 
written to you again. . . .” 

“But, of course, I came,” said Anne. “Anything 
that is of importance to Tony is of importance to me, 
too.” 

The two sat down facing one another. 

“Oh, but you are going to have lunch with me, 
won’t you . . . unless . . . you can’t have lunched 


1 1 8 


THE LURE 


already . . . you have another engagement perhaps. 

. . . I — I — had hoped then we could talk while 

it went on, if you don’t mind.” 

She spoke rapidly, twisting the rings on her fingers 
nervously. She wore far too many. 

“Yes, I can lunch with you,” Anne said. “I have 
an hour.” 

“Then I will get a table,” said her hostess, rising 
again hurriedly. 

“You’ve dropped your handkerchief,” Anne re- 
minded her, stooping to pick up the humid atom. 

“Thank you, thank you, please don’t, it’s very good 
of you! Perhaps you would like to wash?” She 
looked surreptitiously at her own face in the mirror 
and uttered a little “Oh!” of horror. “I must — I look 
awful!” 

They went to the ladies’ cloakroom, Anne more and 
more mystified. 

“Do I look very much as if I had been crying?” 
Mrs. Watson asked suddenly, wheeling around on 
Anne, the powder-puff poised between two fingers. 

“No-o,” replied Anne, embarrassed. “But I think 
I should rub some of the powder off ... it makes 
it more conspicuous.” 

Mrs. Watson did so, obediently. “I have cried, and 
cried,” she said, flicking at her cheeks with a piece 
of chamois leather. “My nose is swollen, isn’t it — I’m 
afraid it will show. It is very silly, I know, but I 
couldn’t help it. ... I am not a strong-minded 
woman. I have never been that. I cannot face 
things.” 

It was almost self-evident. 

“Your brother tells me you are so clever, that you 
are earning your own living like a man . . . that 
you are a writer. And that is why I came to you. He 
doesn’t know that I have come.” 


THE LURE 


119 

She was perilously near giving way to sobs again, 
but restrained herself with an effort, and applied the 
powder-puff once again in absence of mind to the 
polished tip of her little nose. 

“Shall — sh-shall we go in to lunch?” she ventured, 
with a desperate recovery of her voice. 

“I am ready,” said Anne. You will feel better after 
lunch.” 

“Do you think so?” she asked with pathetic faith 
in all that was said to her. “I ate no breakfast, and 
since then I have only had a John Collins, a lemon 
squash and gin together, you know. And some sal 
volatile at the chemist’s. . . . Will this table do? 
Shall we have it a la carte ? If you don’t mind, per- 
haps we had better have the day’s menu; it saves so 
much thinking, and the waiter can go on bringing 
things without interrupting us. . . . My head aches 
horribly. . . . What will you drink?” 

“Soda-water, please.” 

“No wine? Do, to please me. I must have some- 
thing; I need it when my nerves are in this state. 
Waiter! a bottle of soda-water and half a bottle of 
this.” 

She indicated a champagne in the wine-list. 

“Tony always makes me drink champagne when I 
am depressed,” she went on. “He says it is a tonic. 
. . . Oh, dear, please forgive me for talking so much 
about myself!” 

Anne felt apprehensive lest Mrs. Watson’s lips 
should quiver again with unrestrained grief. 

“Let us eat the hors d’ceuvre first,” she suggested 
quickly. “We won’t talk of things till then. I was 
sorry I couldn’t meet you, but I could not leave the 
office.” 

“Oh! You have an office!” said the little woman, 
her tone conveying extreme awe. 


120 


THE LURE 


“I haven’t, but the newspaper I am working for 
has,” explained Anne, noticing that Mrs. Watson was 
doing tolerable justice to the hors d’ oeuvre in spite of 
her woe. When the champagne had arrived, and Mrs. 
Watson had set down her glass half empty, there was 
a visible lightening of the burden of grief. 

“No may we talk?” she asked with childlike naivete. 

“Yes,” said Anne, taking instinctively the position 
of the grown-up. “But you mustn’t cry.” 

“I won’t ... I don’t think I could any more. I 
have reached that point. . . . But you won’t think I 
am very dreadful for what I am going to tell you? 
... I should never have dared to, only your brother 
has always said you were so broad-minded about 
things.” 

Anne felt embarrassment anew. 

“You had much better tell me everything she said 
with emphasis. “Don’t leave me to guess at the truth. 
It is easier for me to help then.” 

“I will, I will,” said Mrs. Watson, fervently. The 
roast lamb had come and with it a fortification of self- 
control. 

“Besides, it isn’t as if it were — very unusual,” she 
added, with simplicity. “Well . . . your brother and 
I have been in love with each other for a long time. 
It was very wrong of me, I know” — here she was 
perilously near a sniff — “but I couldn’t help it. . . . 
I have never been fond of my husband, you see, 
and I must have affection. I have always been like 
that.” 

Anne had already decided that here was the lady 
of whom Piggy had spoken. She was so fluffy, so ir- 
responsible, so tear-stained, that Anne’s harsher view 
of the case underwent a change. How was it possible 
to label this little person a wicked woman ? 

“I understand,” she said in a gentler voice, as 


THE LURE 


I 2 1 


though coaxing a child into confession. “So — you 
and Tony — behaved foolishly.” 

Mrs. Watson gulped, and nodded her fair head. 

“ Very foolishly/’ she answered, as soon as she could 
find her strangled voice. “You mustn’t be hard on 
me, Miss Moorhouse.” 

“But I’m not,” said Anne. “Only you had much 
better tell me exactly what has happened, so that I 
shall be less in the dark.” 

Mrs. Watson took a feverish sip at her champagne. 

“It was the day before yesterday,” she said. “We 
often motor together. I met him just outside Aider- 
shot; he was there with the car . . . he is so careful, 
he has been so careful not to compromise me. And 
my husband has seemed to suspect nothing. . . . He 
said he would be away till Wednesday — my husband 
I mean ... so, so we decided to spend the night at 
a hotel at Windsor ” 

“Which hotel ?” asked Anne. 

“The Bear and Bull. . . . Well, we did.” 

Anne restrained an exclamation. 

“And you were seen . . .?” 

“Yes ... it was very awful. . . . The very next 
day (it was Sunday), at breakfast, Captain Host and 
Mrs. Host were sitting at a table by the window. . . . 
Tony was down first, but he had no time to warn me. 
But, that wasn’t all, though it was bad enough. This 
morning Tony got a letter from my husband’s law- 
yers saying ... I got him to give me a copy of the 
letter.” She handed it to the girl. 

Anne read it with growing horror. 

“But this is very serious!” 

The lips began to tremble. “Ye-es.” 

“But you don’t suggest that Captain Host commu- 
nicated with your husband?” 

“Tony asked him. He went to his home and told 


122 


THE LURE 


him what had happened. But Captain Host denied 
that either he or his mother had said a word to any 
one. But I knew better. I’m not a fool.” 

She clenched her small beringed hands. 

“Captain Host is incapable of telling a lie,” Anne 
answered with cold and positive conviction. “Besides, 
he is a friend of ours.” 

“Then she did, the old cat.” 

“I think one can be perfectly safe in taking Cap- 
tain Host’s word for it that his mother has said 
nothing.” 

“But who else could have ” 

“Had you a chauffeur?” 

“No. Tony drives the car himself.” 

“There was no other face that you knew in Wind- 
sor? You are certain? Your husband may have had 
you watched.” 

“But he suspected nothing, Miss Moorhouse.” 

“Are you certain? The whole thing looks like a 
trap.” 

“That’s what Tony says. He believes Captain Host, 
too.” 

“Of course. . . . He doesn’t know you have come 
up to see me?” 

“Who? Tony? No one knows.” 

“You must be very careful what you do,” said Anne, 
with a sudden wisdom beyond her years. “Promise 
me you won’t see Tony alone again ” 

“If you think it will be dangerous ” answered 

her hostess with a sob. 

“You mustn't , really. ...” 

Anne sat for a while crumbling her bread while 
she thought. 

“You — you shared a room in the hotel?” said she 
at length, her cheeks scarlet. 

“Well, no — we didn’t. They were on the same 


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123 


floor. Tony thought it best not. We arrived too late 
for the table d’hote, as the car broke down, so nobody 
saw us have dinner together but one sleepy waiter.” 

"Did Mrs. Host speak to you?” 

"Captain Host made her. It was like this ... I 
came down to breakfast late; Tony had already fin- 
ished his. I sat down at his table just as Captain 
Host came in with his mother. Tony jumped up and 
pretended he wasn’t with me, and then he thought bet- 
ter of it, he told me, as it must have looked fishy, 
our being there together. Captain Host came up and 
spoke to him, and then, Tony said, he suggested quietly 
that Tony had better introduce me to his mother, and 
that we could breakfast together. He, of course, saw 
everything. Tony says it was very decent of him to 
have done so, but I see through it all. And I’m cer- 
tain that old cat told. I never had such a beastly 
breakfast in my life, though the old woman talked 
sugar and honey. Tony introduced me to her as his 
married sister. I think I said that the weather was 
rotten about three time, I was so upset.” 

"What name did Tony give you at the hotel?” 

"My own. There are lots of Mrs. Watsons in the 
world.” 

"Were the Hosts motoring, too ?” 

"I don’t know. I didn’t ask them.” 

"When did you go back to Aldershot?” 

"Directly afterwards.” 

She waited anxiously, her eyes fixed on Anne while 
the girl reflected anxiously in silence, her brows 
brought together in a tense line. 

"Where is your husband?” 

"I don’t know. He has not come back yet.” 

"Have you a mother?” 

"Yes.” 

"Where does she live?” 


124 


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“In Bournemouth.” Mrs. Watson flushed deeply. 
“She keeps a confectioner’s business — a kind of tea- 
rooms. Please don’t tell Tony that.” 

“Could you go to her?” 

Mrs. Watson’s lips quivered. “If I must.” 

“I should think that it would be best for a little 
while. I should say nothing to any one. Don’t write 
to Tony at all. Will you promise me that, faithfully?” 

“I ca-can’t.” 

“You must. I can’t do anything to try to make 
things better unless you do.” 

“But you won’t tell Tony that I have been to see 
you, will you? He would be so angry with me.” 

“I will not tell him unless it is best for you and 
for him. But you must give your promise not to 
write or see him.” 

“Very well,” said the stifled voice. 

Anne gave a hasty glance at her watch. 

“Oh! it is late!” 

“Must you go?” asked Mrs. Watson, miserably. 

“Yes. But ask for a time-table, please.” 

Mrs. Watson did so, and the waiter brought one. 

“Which is your nearest station, Bournemouth West 
or Bournemouth East?” 

“Oh, but I can’t go like this! I have no clothes.” 

“Surely you can get your mother to lend you things. 
There is a train to Bournemouth Central at 3.30. You 
must try to catch that.” 

“But mother doesn’t know I’m coming.” 

“Wire,” said Anne. “I will try to come down to 
see you at the end of the week, and I will do what 
I can — if only you will do as I say.” 

“If you think it is best ” 

“Write your wire now,” said Anne. 

And Mrs. Watson, scared into obedience, did as she 
was told. 


CHAPTER XIII 


I N the presence of Mrs. Watson Anne had been 
calm, but she was far from the self-containedness 
to which she had pretended. She could not hide 
from herself the seriousness of the dreadful thing 
which hung over her brother’s head, and which was 
likely to imperil his whole future. And there was no 
one to help him, no dens ex machina to whom she 
could appeal in the certainty that aid would appear in 
time to avert calamity. 

On her inexperienced shoulders alone lay the bur- 
den of knowledge, the weight of responsibility. She 
beat her brains frantically for a solution of the prob- 
lem. 

What could she do? 

To ask Piggy’s advice would be useless; he could 
do nothing. 

Captain Host loomed up in her mind, a spare, benefi- 
cent, kindly figure. But how could she, a girl, ask him 
for help in such a matter as this? He had already 
done more than could be expected of him in having 
the presence of mind to extend his mother’s uncon- 
scious chaperonage to the pair at breakfast. 

Then a sudden idea leapt into her mind. Somehow 
she was certain that Mrs. Host was a kindly, sensible 
woman. Her son was devoted to her, and Piggy had 
spoken well of her. What if Anne were to go to her, 
put the matter before her, and throw herself on her 
generosity and knowledge of the world? The proposal 
was audacious, but Anne was desperate, and an instinct 
125 


126 


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told her that her confidence in any case would not be 
misplaced. But there was no time to lose. She must 
see Goss at once, ask him for leave of absence, go to 
Aldershot by the first possible train, and see Mrs. Host 
without delay. She put the importance of the affair 
before her pique of the morning. It was an occasion 
on which there could be no hesitation from causes of 
false pride. 

She found that Goss was still out at her return. 
Cool, fragrant of good tobacco, dressed to perfection, 
a luncheon at the Ritz in process of digestion, he sent 
for her at four o’clock. Though she had been chafing 
with impatience, she read him the notes which she had 
taken at X House, without broaching the matter she 
had most in mind. Goss had made her sit in his own 
chair at the Sheraton bureau while she read aloud, and 
occasionally leant over her to view a portion of the 
manuscript in her hand. His proximity gave her a 
sense of uneasiness, and set her pulses beating in spite 
of her resolutions, but he did not actually touch her. 

He was in a high good humor. 

“You’ve done splendidly, Lady Lavender,” he said, 
reverting to out-of-office familiarity. “I knew I was 
right in trusting you. Good girl.” 

“It was easier than I expected,” said Anne. 

“Don’t be neutral ! don’t be neutral,” he cried impa- 
tiently. “You are enthusiastic by temperament. Ad- 
mit you’re pleased !” 

“I was glad,” she said, relaxing a little. 

He paced up and down in thought for a long time. 
Anne did not dare to interrupt him to ask her ques- 
tion. Suddenly he put his hand on her shoulder, and 
bending over her, brushed his lips against her hair. 

“And I was rather abominable to you last night, 
poor child!” 

“Don’t let us speak of that,” she said, thinking it 


THE LURE 


127 

wiser to ignore the caress, though the torch of re- 
sponse flamed in her cheeks. 

“Very well, tabo.o. Only remember I love you, 
Lady Lavender, and don’t be too touch-me-not. You 
are not naturally cold, you are too healthy and natural 
for that, you nice wild thing from the country. You 
must trust me.” 

“I do,” she replied, with downcast eyes. 

He stood for a moment still in thought, and then, 
abruptly reverting to the MS., “As for this, it must 
go through into the next number if the printers sit up 
all night.” 

“But it’s in type already — it’s full.” 

“Oh, I expect Thompson will tear his hair. But I 
do not believe in anything being irretrievable until 
it has reached the news agents and bookstalls.” 

“Is the second number to be on the bookstalls too ?” 
she asked in surprise. 

“My dear girl, you weren’t taken in by that piece 
of blague ? It was a pretty bit of bait to draw sub- 
scriptions, that’s all. . . . They deserved it. What 
earthly difference does it make to them whether it is 
on the bookstalls or not? . . .” He took up the tele- 
phone. 

“Hullo, hullo! . . . Thompson . . . that you? 
We’ve got to fit in three thousands words into the 
number that comes out on Friday next, and give it 
front row, stalls. . . . Impossible? Nonsense. Come 
in, we’ll talk it over. It’s great stuff. . . . Rubbish, 
I say! Expense? We needn’t worry about that. I’d 
rather come out late than miss it. . . . 

He put down the receiver. 

“Then that’s all?” asked Anne, rising. 

“Yes, that’s all,” he repeated absently. 

“I want to ask you if you would mind if I went 
now,” she began bravely. “I have to go to Alder- 


128 


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shot to-night. It is a matter of great importance, or 
I should not ask for leave just before we go to press. 
I’m afraid I shan’t be able to get back till midday 
to-morrow.” 

He looked at her with slight displeasure. But the 
frown cleared immediately. 

“Go, of course,” he said suavely. He gave her a 
keener glance. “I’m always ready to spare you, Lady 
Lavender, if it can be managed. I have never found 
you a slacker, and you have never found me a tyrant, 
have you?” 

“Thank you, it is not an occasion which need be 
repeated, I hope,” she replied, gathering her dignity 
to her aid. 

He smiled, and she went out just as the for once 
perturbed Thompson entered in haste and consterna- 
tion, to interview his erratic chief. 

“Anne! Anne! why weren’t you more on your 
guard!” she reproached herself hotly as she hurried 
on her things and got into a bus that would convey 
her homewards. She must take night-things and put 
up at a hotel that evening, as she could not count 
on getting back. Besides, as she could only arrive in 
Aldershot at dinner-time, she could not very well go 
to the Hosts till the following morning. 

An hour later she reached Waterloo Station in time 
to catch the six o’clock train to Aldershot. She 
scarcely dared think what she intended to say to Mrs. 
Host. She packed herself and her dressing-case into 
a modest-looking hotel bus at the station, and prayed 
fervently that she might meet no one she knew. She 
had met a good many young subalterns through Tony 
and Piggy. She was lucky enough, however, to avoid 
this contingency, and found that the hotel she had 
selected was a modest building in a quiet street. So 
far, so good. She ordered dinner in her room, and 


THE LURE 


129 


asked the waiter who brought it for a directory. But 
the name of Host was not among the list of resi- 
dents. Then she remembered that Captain Host had 
said that his mother lived outside Aldershot. That 
might mean anything within ten miles! She felt 
desperate. How was she to find out? As a last 
resource she appealed to the chambermaid who 
brought her hot water. The chambermaid very nat- 
urally had never heard of the Hosts. 

“But my young man’s a sergeant. I’ll send around 
and ask him. If the gentleman’s a captain, he might 
know.” 

It was a slender chance, but the next morning she 
came in as Anne was drinking her tea to say that she 
had a note by the baker from her young man to say 
that Captain Host lived at a house called “The Aca- 
cias,” two miles out of Aldershot, on the Fleet Road. 
“It’s a funny thing, Miss, but my young man’s very 
friendly with the young chap what looks after the 
gentleman’s polo ponies.” 

Anne ordered a cab, and directed the man to drive 
to “The Acacias.” It was not yet nine, but it would 
take her some little time to get there. She wished 
that it were nearer, for all her courage of yesterday 
had deserted her. She would have given worlds to 
have turned back. But it was not a Moorhouse char- 
acteristic to turn back, and she sat in the rumbling 
cab feeling as if she were in a tumbril on her way to 
the guillotine. What if she were making an entirely 
false step? She told herself that this was not the 
moment to reflect upon that possibility. 

The cab turned into the drive of a quiet-looking 
country house, the white swing gate being already 
open. Laurel bushes and trees edged the drive for 
about twenty yards, and hid the house itself, which 
turned its face from the road. The birds were sing- 


130 


THE LURE 


ing among the fresh green leaves with all the glad 
abandon of May. Two great broom bushes in the 
old-fashioned garden beyond the drive were aflame 
with yellow. Somewhere a cuckoo was calling. The 
spring sun shone on the polished glass of the win- 
dows and the low white front of the Victorian edi- 
fice, when the drive took an abrupt turn to the right, 
a building whose very air of ancient and prosperous 
respectability seemed incongruous with Anne’s pur- 
pose in knocking at the front door. 

Her knock was answered by a housemaid in pink 
print, who said that Mrs. Host was in. Anne followed 
her over the soft carpet spread in the square hall with 
its polished boards, into a sunny, low-ceilinged draw- 
ing-room with French windows opening directly on the 
lawn and the shrubbery beyond. A Louis Quinze 
clock, painted with exquisite figures and flowers by 
a ruffled hand some two centuries ago, ticked solemnly 
on the mantelpiece. Water-color miniatures of Geor- 
gian and Victorian forbears hung on the walls on back- 
grounds of black velvet; the furniture was covered 
with chintz. The whole room spoke of several gener- 
ations of placid and cultured inhabitants. Their per- 
sonalities still clung to the room like the fragrance of 
lavender. 

Anne’s chair commanded a view of the lawn, and 
before long she saw a dumpy little figure of a woman, 
her skirt pinned out of reach of the damp grass, a 
basket and a pair of garden shears in her hand, and 
a big rush hat on her head. The figure was approach- 
ing the house. 

A minute after, the same little figure, minus the 
encumbrances, the skirt unpinned again and the hands 
ungloved, entered the room. Mrs. Host was a pleas- 
ant-featured woman of fifty odd years. She had been 
fashioned in a small mold, for which Nature had at- 


THE LURE 


131 

tempted to atone by making her plump. Her skin 
was fresh and clear, the gray hair was arranged in 
a fringe like the Queen-Mother’s, there were lines of 
humor about the eyes in which the bright blue of girl- 
hood had scarcely faded. 

Anne felt her courage, which had been at lowest 
ebb, return to her. 

“I am so sorry to have kept you, Miss Moorhouse; 
but, to tell the truth, I have been doing some garden- 
ing. I do most of it myself with the help of the 
coachman and of my son when he is at home — which 
is unfortunately seldom.” 

“It is I who should apologize,” said Anne nervously, 
“for coming so early. But I have to get back to Lon- 
don, and I wanted to see you very badly.” 

Mrs. Host looked at the girl with slight aston- 
ishment in her clear blue eyes. 

“It is Lieutenant Moorhouse’s sister, isn’t it ?” 

“Yes. I know it must seem curious . . She 
hesitated, her face burning : it was so difficult to make 
a beginning. 

“We had the pleasure of seeing him only last Sun- 
day . . . and your sister, too.” 

Then she suspected nothing. 

“It is about that that I wish to speak to you,” 
said Anne desperately, her breath coming quicker. 
“Please, Mrs. Host, don’t think me very wild in ap- 
pealing to you. But I have heard from every one 
that you are kind, and I thought ... I thought 
you might give me advice.” 

The blue eyes became grave and interrogative. 

“Of course, my dear child — wouldn’t you be more 
comfortable in that arm-chair? — of course, I am ready 
to give advice if you need it. But why do you come 
to me? Are you sure that there is not some one bet- 
ter qualified to give it than myself? Your sister, for 


i 3 2 THE LURE 

instance.” She hesitated over the last words, Anne 
noticed. 

“I haven't got any one” said Anne. “And it is just 
that which . . . which makes the responsibility 
so difficult. There is no one but me to care what 
happens to Tony, and I do care horribly. We are 
alone, you see, since father’s death last year.” 

Mrs. Host leant over, and put one plump hand on 
Anne’s knee. 

“My dear, I understand. You poor motherless chil- 
dren ! Now tell me all about it, and I will see whether 
I cannot put my old head together with your young 
one, and think of a way to pull you out of your diffi- 
culty. . . . Now, has this to do with my son?” 

There was a sudden trace of anxiety, of suspicion, 
in her voice. 

“In a way,” said Anne. “But only because he hap- 
pened to be there.” 

“My son told me that for private reasons your sis- 
ter did not want it known that she was in Windsor. 
So I have said nothing to any one, if that is what is 
troubling you.” 

“It isn’t that . . .” said Anne. “May I tell you 
everything, just as it has happened?” 

“Of course. But remember this, child, that how- 
ever great the relief may be in telling some one else 
one’s private difficulties, one has to think very seri- 
ously before admitting an outsider into family secrets. 
If you have already taken this into consideration you 
may rely on my secrecy, that goes without saying. I 
only mention this because I remember what a weight 
a secret was to me when I was your age. It is only 
when one is old and has grown to realize how, with 
the best intentions in the world, the most sympathetic 
of listeners can be a dangerous confidante, that one 
learns the value of reticence.” 


THE LURE 


133 


“I think that it is necessary,” said Anne, meeting 
her kind eyes. “Because exactly what I am frightened 
of is every one knowing, and you may be able to ad- 
vise me how to stop that.” 

With slight incoherence, because of her earnestness, 
she told Mrs. Host what she knew herself, from 
Piggy’s hint to Mrs. Watson’s revelations of yester- 
day. 

Mrs. Host heard her through in absolute silence, 
which continued even after Anne had finished her tale. 

Then she said — 

“Yes, you were right. You could not have man- 
aged this alone.” 

“You mustn’t think too hard of Tony, will you?” 
pleaded Anne. “You don’t know him as I know him. 
He never thinks ... he is fatally good-natured 
... he never means to do wrong things.” 

“Those are the kind of people who cause most 
trouble. I am not thinking of your brother hardly, 
my dear. But he has put us all in a very uncomfort- 
able situation; himself worst of all. ... So that 
was Mrs. Watson. Knowing Mr. Moorhouse, I 
rather wondered why . . . and yet I believed Peter 
when he told me that invention — I suppose to shield 
your brother; he has always liked him. . . . You 
see, we did not meet them the night before — we had 
been dining in Windsor with some friends of Peter’s 
and came in late. I expected to find an old friend 
of mine with her son at the hotel, because there is a 
wedding this week and there was no room for them 
in the bride’s house. If they had come, your brother 
would have had to go to another hotel, as we had 
wired in advance for rooms, and we found it quite 
full. . . . But, you poor child, I can understand 
why you are worried. It is not the sort of responsi- 
bility to fall on shoulders as young as yours. I won- 


134 


THE LURE 


der why Mrs. Watson took it into her head to tell 
you? I am afraid she is a very weak-minded little 
woman. I am surprised that your brother . . . 
well, to begin with, she is hardly of his own class. 
You were quite right to make her go to Bournemouth. 
I only hope she will not attempt to communicate with 
your brother; a promise does not always mean much 
to that type of woman, I am afraid.” 

“I think that she is too thoroughly frightened to 
break it,” said Anne. 

“Have you the letter? The one that Mr. Watson's 
lawyers wrote?” 

Anne produced it. Mrs. Host raised a pair of 
pince-nez to her eyes and read it through. Her face 
was very grave, but on looking up and meeting Anne’s 
anxious face, she smiled encouragingly. 

“You mustn’t worry too much, dear child. Many 
worse shoals than this have safely been navigated. 
But, do you know, I’m afraid that this is a case in 
which women are of very little good. From all I 
have heard the husband is a most unscrupulous per- 
son. I want you to let me tell my son. He will be 
far wiser than either of us in such matters as these. 
And, till then, you must promise me not to trouble 
your young brain too much. I am sorry that a child 
like you should even know of such a sordid happen- 
ing.” 

“I am twenty-three,” said Anne. 

“Really — ? You don’t look even that age. Now 
I want you to stay to lunch with me. My son has 
deserted me till to-night, so that you need not fear 
to meet him ; though he will be very disappointed that 
he has not seen you. You must be the Miss Moor- 
house that he met at Lady Helen Moorhouse’s dance 
in town.” 

“Yes.” 


THE LURE 


135 


“He spoke about you when he came back, and told 
me you were working on a newspaper. You must 
tell me what you do — I am so very ignorant of that 
kind of world, and very much in awe of it, if it must 
be confessed.” 

“Thank you, but I can’t possibly stay to lunch.” 
Anne said. “I want to catch the 11.30 train to town, 
that is why I kept the cab waiting. I must get 
back.” 

“But you are too late for that train.” 

“There is three-quarters of an hour,” said Anne, 
looking at the clock. 

“You are right — if you have a good horse he can 
do it in half-an-hour. Well, I won’t press you, be- 
cause your voice was very firm when you said 'must.’ 
But you will come down again ? I may have news for 
you. In the meantime, leave the matter with me, 
and rely on my being very discreet. Peter is a rock 
of strength, you know. Now when can you come? 
We have a spare bed.” 

“I had better not come till Saturday afternoon, 
unless something unexpected happens,” said Anne, ris- 
ing. “Because I ought not to leave the office twice 
in the same week.” 

“To-day is Tuesday. . . . Well, if I have news 
for you, you could come down by the evening train, 
dine and sleep here, and get up by the 'early worm’ 
express in time for your work. Otherwise I shall 
expect you on Saturday. Now you ought to start if 
you mean to catch that train, so I won’t keep you 
talking.” 

“I can’t thank you,” said Anne, clinging to the 
plump hand, “because I shouldn’t feel equal to it. 
But if only I could let you know how grateful I 
am. 

“Nonsense — so far I’ve done nothing useful. Keep 


THE LURE 


136 

your thanks until we see what Peter advises. Good- 
by, dear child, and cheer up !” 

She kissed Anne, drawing her down to do so, and 
Anne returned the kiss as warmly, though unexpected 
tears evoked by the little woman’s motherliness were 
so near the surface as to choke her words. 

“She’s a dear,” said Anne to herself, as the cab 
rattled off at top speed. “And I’d give anything to 
be like that when I’m old. No, I wish I were like 
that now . . . then I could really be of some use 
in the world.” 


CHAPTER XIV 


“ Un baiser, mais a tout prendre, qu’est ce ? 

Un serment fait d’un peu plus pres, une promesse 
Plus precise, un aveu qui veut se confirmer, 

Un point rose qu’on met sur PT du verbe aimer; 

C’est un secret qui prend la bouche pour oreille, 

Un instant d’infini qui fait un bruit d’abeille 
Une communion ayant un gout de fleur, 

Une faqon d’un peu se respirer le cceur 

Et d’un peu se gouter, au bord des levres, l’ame ! ” 

Edmond Rostand. 

T HE next day and the next passed without event. 
Anne saw little of Goss, and though the mem- 
ory of what had passed between them gave 
her a sense of disquietude, she began to lull herself 
into a feeling of security. The moments when he 
chanced to be in the office seemed to her, nevertheless, 
the most vital moments in the day. She saw every- 
thing he did, said, or was in large type. Trivialities 
of manner, of expression, of speech, were seized on by 
her subconscious mind as precious, just as a vagabond 
seizes on the end of a cigarette thrown into the gutter 
by the passer-by. For her, his personality dominated 
and illuminated the place. The perfume of his to- 
bacco, the sight of his big shoulders and fine head, 
the insistent “Gossishness” of him, as Miss Neville 
termed it, pervaded the office, making the other per- 
sonalities thin and vapory. Though she might not 
come directly into contact with him, she could not 
avoid that. 

‘There’s a pleasant smell about him, that I grant 
you,” said Miss Neville to Anne. 

“What do you mean?” 

137 


THE LURE 


138 

“Nonsense, you know what I mean. I consider it 
to my credit that I see through him in spite of it. 
It’s a thing which by itself appeals to the woman in 
me or you or any female thing. The mixture of Eau 
Ltibin, Pears’ soap, excellent tobacco and so on that 
flavor a man, so to speak, are invaluable adjuncts in 
his dealing with women. Looks don’t count tuppence, 
cleanliness does. It’s the woman’s natural instinct 
of selection and a most healthy instinct for the race. 
She likes the man to preen. She likes him to be well 
conditioned. The ugliest man, if well-groomed, 
counts with women. He may be an Apollo, but if his 
curly hair is dirty and he uses vile tobacco, no decent 
woman would think of him. I don’t include hysteri- 
cal art students.” 

“What nonsense you talk!” said Anne, laughing. 

“Not at all. Women are governed by trifles, 
though they imagine they are swayed by much bigger 
things. It is quite possible that Cleopatra was fas- 
cinated by Antony’s hair-oil when she thought it was 
his personality. As a matter of fact, personality and 
the stuff one puts on one’s hair are often synonymous. 
According as a man washes and dresses, so is he. 
Look at Goss. It is part of Goss to be a D’Orsay. 
And a commendable part, too. He is a product of 
civilization. Women always go for the most civilized 
thing within reach, often for the over-civilized. It’s 
a law of evolution. . . . Do you know, my child, 
a propos of this interesting example of manhood, that 
you got the color of the Red Book when Goss ad- 
dressed you this morning, and that the same thing 
happened when he rang you up from his room this 
morning?” 

“I blush for nothing at all,” said Anne, flushing 
again. 

“Do you call Goss nothing at all? I hope you 


THE LURE 


*39 


haven’t allowed him to trifle ? He means to philander 
with you, I know by instinct. Keep him at a distance, 
he’s a dangerous creature. It’s impertinent of me to 
say anything, but I’ve rather a fondness for you — 
you are so remarkably callow in your mind and ways. 
Save yourself for the right man, child; he’s worth 
waiting for. I didn’t — and when the right man came 
— well, it was too late, that was all.” 

Something more melancholy than bitter in Miss 
Neville’s last words prevented Anne from taking of- 
fense. The elder woman’s eyes were full of ghosts as 
she looked past Anne at a vision of herself at Anne’s 
age and she forgot, in meeting its eyes, that Anne had 
made no answer. 

What answer could she give? She was conscious 
that Goss rose bigger on her horizon every day. She 
might set her will against it, refuse to register the 
fact; but there it was. 

And he? 

He let her know in several little ways, almost im- 
perceptible to her supersensitive consciousness, that 
he remembered, that he was deliberately leaving un- 
said and undone what he would have said and done 
had she been a woman instead of a girl. His elabor- 
ate treatment of her as the jeune fille alternately tor- 
mented her and wrung admiration from her, as he 
had intended. She found herself resentful at the 
hedge placed around her supposed ignorance of life 
— her “lily-ishness” — as he had once termed it. Lady 
Esmeralda had calmly stepped over her hedge and 
picked her happiness with a casual hand. Anne had 
to sit within hers with a tortured spirit. 

Goss had a manner, apparently unthinking and in- 
voluntary, of reminding her of his physical presence. 
A light hand on her shoulder when he bent to see 
something on her desk, quickly withdrawn if she 


140 


THE LURE 


shrank and flushed, left her with the conviction that 
she would have done less to aggravate the importance 
of the action had she simulated not to notice it. An- 
other time, he would make a little caressing gesture, 
half-playful, half-defiant, as if to say, “My dear child, 
don’t be prudish! You can at least allow me to be 
paternal.” 

But these casual and to appearance harmless small 
intimacies were built up gradually, gradually into a 
bridge that spanned her watchfulness over herself to 
her spontaneous worship of him. 

The day came, when finding her alone, and sitting 
beside her to make some suggestions as to the revi- 
sion of a page, he kissed her. 

Anne, to her own surprise, said or did nothing. 
She disengaged herself, and continued to speak, in a 
voice which quavered for an instant, of the matter 
which was in hand, but she did not draw away the 
hand over which he had placed his own. It was as if 
a charm lay heavy upon her, drugging that watch- 
dog instinct which had protected her against herself. 
Before she was well aware of what had happened, she 
was drawn against his shoulder almost passively, the 
caress of the man she idolized lifting her out of her 
sane self for the moment, into the Abode of Rosy 
Clouds which a mischievous Cupid strikes open with 
his wings at the magic word of a first lover. The 
Pied Piper had fluted very softly, very enticingly, her 
feet had begun to follow him down the flowery path 
automatically, without conscious volition. The dizzy 
realization that she loved him swept into her soul to 
the tune of that subtle and irresistible fluting. And 
at Anne’s age the knowledge that one loves a man 
does not come smilingly, ironically, as it does to a 
woman of experience. It comes in the guise of a 
giant. 


THE LURE 


141 

“Dear little girl ! Dear little Anne ! My dear un- 
kissed, delicious piece of womanhood. . . . Forgive 
me . . . I am all manner of brutes . . . Anne, my 
darling girl. . . 

There was the sound of somebody in the passage, 
and he abruptly released her, saying in a perfectly 
ordinary voice : 

“And we will cut that last paragraph entirely. The 
whole thing could end at the top of the column and 
give us space for your notes.” 

The interruption passed, but Goss haa risen to go 
in answer to a demand for him on the telephone. 

At the door he paused, came swiftly back, and said 
to Anne in a low voice — 

“I must see you. Can you wait after six to-night? 
You can easily invent an excuse.” 

“Yes,” answered Anne, scarcely knowing what her 
lips said. She was in such tumult that her reasoning 
mind was for the time paralyzed. It was only when 
he had gone that she was able to realize what had 
happened, to turn her eyes upon the places in her 
soul that, hitherto in the twilight of consciousness, 
were now illumined pitilessly by sudden self-knowl- 
edge. 

Was this strange, blinding emotion, that robbed her 
of will and upset her whole well-ordered cosmography, 
what other women called love? Love, that she had 
regarded hitherto with smiling equanimity and supe- 
riority? If it were, it had come in the guise, not of 
an angel, but of a satyr, playing sweet and forbidden 
music on stolen pipes. 

If this were indeed love, she must have been more 
or less in love with him ever since their first meeting. 
She ran hastily over her memories of him. She re- 
membered her earliest impressions of him as he sat 


142 


THE LURE 


in the chair and listened while she read him her manu- 
script. She saw his easy pose, his Olympian looks, his 
self-confidence, his manner, plausible, breezy, magnifi- 
cent, Irish. She had recognized the conquering male 
in him even when she was timidly critical of him. 
He had always been bigger than life-size. 

And yet, the whole thing was grotesquely impossi- 
ble. The Pied Piper, pipe he never so wisely, had 
an enemy in the girl’s very heart. Everything that 
was sane, that was proud in her, told her that she had 
been a fool, and that she must put her fingers to 
her ears while it was yet time, even though it were 
torture not to follow the seductive music, prancing 
feet, and slanting glance of the pied enchanter into 
the Mountains of Desire. 

No, she was an ordinary young Englishwoman, 
with a normal sense of fitness. It was not fit 
that she should allow Huntly Goss to make love 
to her. 

She would meet him afterwards as she had prom- 
ised, but to make their position very clear. 

“I say, Miss Moorhouse, did you pass this 
proof ?” asked Thompson, breaking in on her troubled 
thoughts. Anne looked up. She was hunting out the 
histories of certain people enumerated in a list be- 
fore her in Who's Who and other books of refer- 
ence. 

“Yes.” 

“Well, it’s been referred back again, and I find 
you’ve let some glaring things go through.” 

“I’m sorry,” said Anne meekly. 

“You’re usually a careful proof-reader. But look 
here, in describing the recent arrival at Richmond 
House you’ve left, 'Last Saturday the long-wished-for 
hare (h-a-r-e) was born to Lady X at Richmond 


THE LURE 


i43 

House, descendant of a long line of,’ etc. Lucky it 
came up for a second reading/’ 

“Fm very sorry,” repeated Anne. “I didn’t notice 
it.” 

Thompson took the offending slip away, and she 
forced herself to concentrate her mind on the list. 
But her pulses were beating irregularly. She could 
hear Goss’s voice in the next room, and against her 
own will strained to hear what he was saying, though 
he was only discussing a color process. The touch 
of his lips, of his arm around her, seemed to persist 
as if the caress were a lingering perfume; she was 
obsessed by the memory of it, while her energetic 
young soul endeavored to flagellate her sleeping pride 
from its lethargy. 

Six o’clock. There was the usual sudden commo- 
tion that closing time brings with it. Desks were 
shutting, people talking, doors opening. Anne sat 
on, her books in front of her. 

“Put away your books, child, and walk as far as 
Bond Street with me.” 

“I want to finish.” 

“You’re a regular ‘smug,’ and you’ll spoil your nice 
eyes.” 

Anne fenced off Miss Neville’s banter, and that 
capable though wearied journalist departed with the 
rest. Did she suspect that Anne was staying behind 
to tryst with Goss ? It could not really be so, and yet 
to Anne’s sensitive consciousness it seemed that the 
elder woman’s keen eyes must read her troubled soul. 

The office was quiet. She still worked on, mechani- 
cally. Ten minutes! A quarter of an hour. Not a 
sound. She could bear it no longer. She rose, put 
her books together, and went through the two outer 
offices into Goss’s room. It was empty. 

She could only come to one conclusion. 


144 


THE LURE 


He had forgotten. He had gone. 

The reaction was sudden. She lost sight of all 
her plans for self-discipline and renunciation, of her 
intentions of replacing their relationship where it was 
in the first days of their acquaintance. She lost sight 
of the fact that she should have been glad. She was 
only conscious of the hurt of disappointment, the sting 
of bruised pride, of her need of him, of emptiness 
where she had expected the presence of the god. 

It was irrational, and wholly feminine. He had ap- 
parently anticipated her own wish, and instead of 
being pleased she was piqued and wounded. She bit 
her lips, but the tears would come. She called her self- 
respect to her rescue, but it forsook her and fled. 

The hot tears that had welled up overflowed, and 
she stood by the window looking at the sedate and 
sooty street, pressing her hands against the cool glass 
as if contact with that clear chilly substance would 
bring reason back to her. 

“Good Lord! you’re not crying! My dear girl, 
what is the matter? What has happened?” 

He had come in with unusual softness over the 
thick carpet, and she had not noticed it. His arms 
were around her, very tenderly and consolingly. 

Before she knew what had happened she was drying 
her wet cheek against his gray sleeve and feeling in 
an ignominious way that she was three years old in- 
stead of three-and-twenty. 

“Out with it! What’s the trouble?” 

“I was silly. . . ” 

“Of course, most nice women are. The precise 
silliness, dear Lady Lavender?” 

“I thought — I thought,” she said between laughter 
and tears, “that you had forgotten . . . that you had 
gone ... I mean ” 


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145 


“Didn’t you know that I had to rush out of the of- 
fice just before six? I went there and back in a taxi 
so as not to keep you waiting. Forget? Good Lord! 
And you cared — you cared enough to cry, dear heart !” 

She could not stem the torrent now, and it was so 
good to stand there in the confident haven of hiis 
strength. Her forehead was burning, her hands were 
dry, she was no longer Anne Moorhouse but an emo- 
tion. The piping, deadly sweet, filled her ears, steal- 
ing her strength of purpose, and the clear-headed child 
she had been was a woman, hysterical before forces in 
her own heart of which she knew nothing. 

It was a moment before she wrenched herself free 
and stood looking at him with miserable eyes. 

“You mustn’t look so blue,” he remarked, sitting 
down in the familiar arm-chair, and drawing her 
gently down. 

“Don’t, don’t!” 

“Why not?” 

“Because we mustn’t.” 

It was “we” now, the pronoun only used by Adam 
and Eve when they had been turned out of Paradise 
by the flaming sword of common guilt. 

“But why mustn’t we, Anne dear? . . . Will you 
listen to reason?” 

“Yes,” she replied in a muted voice. 

“Then take the chair on the other side of the table 
— where I can’t kiss you — and listen to common sense. 
I’ve been extremely self-denying about you, young 
woman; I’ve wanted to catch you round the waist 
and kiss that annoyingly straight mouth of yours — 
well, I can’t tell you how many times since last Sun- 
day night.” 

His eyes narrowed down, though his fine lips were 
smiling. “You are forbidden fruit. I am aware of 
that. The girl who had — no, it is has, now! — never 


THE LURE 


146 

been kissed. Fine title for a suburban thriller, isn’t 
it! But I am Adam’s clay and I am liable to lapses 
from virtue; as a matter of fact, I rarely regret them. 
But you are to be considered, and we’ll consider your 
side of it dispassionately and without prejudice. Now 
precisely, what harm am I going to do you if I do 
kiss you sometimes? We won’t give the kiss more 
than its current value. The first kiss, I will grant you, 
has a market value above the face value, and when I 
stole that it was inadvertently. I apologize. But the 
harm is done. I cannot return you your property and 
finish with the injury. Don’t look at me like that, 
dearest girl! . . . Supposing I do kiss you some- 
times, then — occasionally? I love you too much to 
wish to make you unhappy. But you do like me, don’t 
you. You are not a senseless prude — though you are 
as unbending and white as a lily, and I love you for it. 
I am older than you. I have plenty of self-control. 
Why should we give a kiss the gross signification which 
literal-minded people give it? Don’t you remember 
Rostand’s delicious definition of it, Le point rose 
qu’on met stir l’‘i’ du verbe aimer ! We are rather 
fond of each other, Lady Lavender. There is no 
reason why we should start spitting and swearing like 
cats on a roof because we have discovered the fact. 
There’s nothing mighty volcanic about the discovery. 
May we not find an idyll hiding among the facts like 
a butterfly in the rain if we hunt it out? Here are 
two very human people, an elderly man of the world 
(shall we say) and a young girl, blown together by 
chance or destiny. The man of the world who has 
wandered a good deal up the beaten paths of the 
knowledge of women is attracted to something in the 
girl that he has never discovered before. It is like 
the scent of fresh clover to a man accustomed to 
Pivet or Houbigant essences. He values it, being a 


THE LURE 


147 


connoisseur. And the girl? She recognizes that there 
may be something beneath the charlatan, and it is 
part of her generous nature to give him a little of the 
warmth and fragrance of her youth. Are they to bang 
the door to between a perfectly natural sympathy. 

. . . I’m not going to ask you for more than 
that, dearest. In fact, as the more delicate French 
language puts it, making no hard line through the 
tremulous borderland between liking and loving, no 
stern customs at the frontier to examine hearts that 
pass to and fro for contrabrand thoughts — these two 
people’s s’aiment. May they not put the * point rose 9 
on the verb, sometimes ?” 

He leant over the table, and held out his hands — 

“Anne!” 

“Yes?” She lifted her brown eyes, still wet, to 
his. 

“Can’t you give me that unconventional friendship 
between a man and a woman which just recognizes 
that there is a borderland, little girl? There is a 
pretty name for that temperate zone which is not too 
hot for the butterflies of romance, nor too chilly for 
the reddest roses of the heart. It is the Pays dn Ten- 
dre. The Country of Tender Things. Anne, you 
must adventure with me in it. You have the spirit 
of adventure, haven’t you? I ask no other comrade, 
and you are at liberty to leave the battered old travel- 
ler as soon as the gay young knight appears. . . . 

You are not the type of woman that can go through 
life with her temperament in a sealed casket. . . . 
Well?” 


CHAPTER XV 


A NNE had been prepared to go down to Aider- 
shot on Saturday. But on Friday a letter in 
Mrs. Host’s thin, old-fashioned writing an- 
nounced that she and her son had decided to come up 
to town a week earlier, and that they should expect 
Anne to dinner on Monday evening, “by which time 
I hope to have some news for you.” Anne accepted 
immediately, and wrote to Mrs. Watson at Bourne- 
mouth — 

“Please stay where you are for the present. I am 
relying on your promise to make no communication 
with Tony, for his own sake as well as yours. His 
whole career depends upon you. Do be brave, and 
not write or see him. It is the only way out of this 
tangle. I am doing what I can, but will write as 
soon as I have something definite to write.” 

She received a letter by return of post, full of 
incoherent and not always correctly spelled assurances 
that the promise would be kept. “I have heard from 
Tony, and I sent him a wire, but I didn’t give him 
my address. Can’t I write him one little letter and 
address it in another handwriting?” 

To this Anne sent a telegram in reply — 

“Sorry you wired. On no account send letter till 
you have heard from me.” 

She felt angry with the woman for what she had 
done. If she had not given an address, the telegram 
would bear the Bournemouth mark, and would tell 
her brother that Mrs. Watson was in that town. He 
148 


THE LURE 


149 


was quite capable of going down there to discover 
her actual whereabouts. It was not difficult for any 
one to prognosticate that a woman of Mrs. Watson’s 
type would be likely to be on the pier at certain hours, 
or upon the East Cliffs, or with the throng at the 
“church parade,” which takes place on Sundays be- 
tween twelve and one in most seaside towns. 

She could only hope for the best. Write to Tony 
himself she dared not; her only safety in that direc- 
tion lay in pretending ignorance. 

On Monday she went to dinner with the Hosts. 
She found them in a small flat in Kensington, which 
Mrs. Host told her was lent by a friend who had 
gone abroad. Its modern Liberty-cum- Waring fur- 
niture did not altogether accord with Mrs. Host’s 
personality. She was a bush of lavender in a green- 
house full of overgrown chrysanthemums, and did 
not match her surroundings. The spacious low-built 
rooms at Aldershot suited her better than the self- 
conscious striving after artistic effect in the little flat. 

She kissed Anne, and while the girl divested her- 
self of her wraps in the bedroom, she said — 

“No news yet. But my son was to have another 
interview with Mr. Watson in town to-day, and 
he may have something definite for us when he 
comes in.” 

Her tone was not altogether reassuring, and Anne’s 
spirit, quick to sense the fact that all was not well, 
searched the wholesome old face anxiously. 

“He has seen him before, then?” 

“Yes.” 

“And what ” She paused, not knowing what 

question to ask. 

“Well, that is why I am glad that you have come 
before my son’s return. We can talk quietly in the 
drawing-room about it — dinner will be late, I fear, 


1 5 o THE LURE 

as I want to wait till at least eight o’clock in case 
Peter is delayed.” 

Anne followed her into the minute drawing-room. 
A fire was burning on the hearth, for it was one of 
those days on which spring has fractiously returned 
to her furs and sulks, although the season was well 
advanced. 

Mrs. Host put her into a comfortable chair by the 
hearth, and then began with a touch of embarrass- 
ment — 

“l am afraid you may consider what my son has 
done a little questionable, as I did at first. But he 
has talked me over, and I think we should try to see 
it from his point of view for your brother’s sake. 
It would be a terrible thing if his whole life were 
wrecked because of this piece of folly. ... I think 
it better to tell you what has been done . . . though 
I wish it could have been done in any other way. 
But I thought over it, and I am ashamed to say that 
I prayed over it, and I came to the conclusion that 
Peter was right, and that the special circumstances 
extenuated, if they did not justify, our conspiracy. 
My son saw Mrs. Watson yesterday, and she is a 
party to it, too.” 

Anne saw that she hated every word that she 
uttered. 

Something had been done with her consent that 
was entirely distasteful to her. 

Mrs. Host continued: “I don’t know whether you 
remember that I told you that we were expecting 
friends at that same hotel? I did, I think. In any 
case, the fortunate thing is that I asked if they were 
there. I said, ‘We are expecting a lady and gentle- 
man in a car; if they come and ask for us, please 
let us know.’ Now, as it happened, your brother 
and Mrs. Watson arrived in a car after dinner. The 


THE LURE 


1 5i 

waiter told my son, and it happened that he did not 
say that they were not the two we were expecting’ — 
Mrs. Dalison and her son. The fact that Mrs. Wat- 
son had breakfast with me the next morning will 
favor the color which Peter has given the incident. 
He has told Mr. Watson that I invited his wife to 
dine with me in Windsor, as your brother was motor- 
ing her over, but that their car breaking down out- 
side the town (which it did, apparently), they arrived 
too late for dinner and stayed the night under my 
chaperonage, and that we breakfasted together. And 
. . . and ... I have written a note to this effect 
to Mr. Watson. I don’t think he can doubt my son’s 
assurances after he has received my letter. And 
there is the porter of whom we made, inquiries. . . . 
Of course, it would be no defence in a court of law, 
and I could not bring my conscience to repeat such 
a story in solemnity, but if we succeed in convincing 
Mr. Watson by this means that he has not a good 
case against them, Peter hoped that the matter might 
end there.” 

She was pinker and straighter-backed than usual 
Anne guessed that the violation done to her proud 
and upright soul by the writing of that note was 
more than could be expressed. The incredible sacri- 
fice of her ideal of truth which had been demanded 
of her, had probably meant as much as anything that 
had ever occurred in her life. Anne knew that her 
son must have brought superhuman persuasion to bear 
to get her to consent to such a thing for the sake of 
a stranger. How had he done it, she asked herself. 
Was there more force in this neutral, sunburnt man 
than she had suspected? 

“I only hope that this perversion of the truth may 
convince him,” said Mrs. Host, a brightness trembling 
in her eyes. 


THE LURE 


152 

“It is noble of you to have done this for us,” said 
Anne, impetuously. “If Tony had been your son 
you could not have done more. I can't thank you 
and Captain Host, I shouldn’t be able to express what 
I thought.” 

“It is his doing, my dear,” replied Mrs. Host, and 
there was a slight tone of resentment in her usually 
kind voice. “He has taken up the matter so warmly. 

Really, I could not have believed ” She broke 

off, as if reproaching herself for a grudging spirit; 
then she went on more calmly — 

“I had to tell you this, though I am sorry that you 
should ever have been dragged into such a sordid 
business, so unfitted to a girl of your age. I should 
not have liked my daughter, if she had lived, to have 
had a single one of the illusions of youth destroyed 
or soiled by contact with the ugly side of life, and 
I feel the same for all nice girls.” 

“But, don’t you think, Mrs. Host, that girls are 
better prepared to meet that ugly side nowadays — 
and they often have to — if they know something of 
it beforehand?” 

“I think that if God brings them into touch with 
the darker and more sorrowful things in this world, 
that He will also give them the resolution and wisdom 
to meet it. But to know of them before there is 
need — that is to invite the ugly and sordid to enter 
one’s life. I think that we attract our lives to us by 
our attitude of mind. You will think me old-fash- 
ioned, but I think that the present way of acquainting 
a girl with life in conversation, in education, in novels, 
and plays, is to make her indulgent of evil, and from 
being indulgent she may become careless; and from 
being careless, the cynical, sordid, irreverent woman 
who is likely to be a prevailing type in this new 
century.” 


THE LURE 


153 

Anne looked at her with affectionate tolerance. 
She felt sure that the elder woman’s argument was 
one-sided, yet, after all, it was a creed which had 
produced the sweetness and gentleness which she saw 
embodied before her. Would the women of to-day 
grow old as graciously ? Was it all a matter for con- 
gratulation that the sheltered, fastidious education of 
yesterday had been replaced by the strenuous and 
clear-eyed education of to-day? She wondered, for a 
moment, and recalled Goss’s phrase: “Progress is 
always attended by vulgarity.” 

Dinner was announced, and Mrs. Host decided to 
wait no longer for her son. The subject which took 
precedence of other topics was Peter. It was easy 
to see that Captain Host’s mother had bounded her 
world with one all-embracing horizon — her son. She 
was fortunate this year, she told Anne, in having her 
son for a whole six months. Last year he was in 
Albania, the year before that he had spent only ten 
weeks at home, and during the years before that he 
had not been home at all, though she had made the 
long journey down to Khartoum to see him there. 

“I sometimes feel inclined to envy other mothers,” 
said the plump little woman, “until I think of their 
sons. Then I feel almost complacent, even with my 
short reign of motherhood, because even a tiny bit of 
Peter is better than seeing ordinary sons every day. 
I expect you will think me a very foolish and infatu- 
ated woman, but at any rate I have the courage of 
my infatuation! . . . And letters are pitiably unsatis- 
factory. I sometimes think that only women can 
write letters which convey anything to a hungry heart. 
A man will think the tender things, but he never puts 
them on paper. I know Peter is fond of his mother, 
and that maybe when he sits down to his weekly let- 
ter he is thinking, 'Dear mother, I would give a great 


154 


THE LURE 


deal to give her a kiss.’ But what he puts down is, 
'Just off duck-shooting with Captain Somebody or 
other. ... I hope you are keeping fit/ and ends in 
haste to catch the post. It takes a wise woman to 
read between the lines/ , 

Captain Host came in just as the joint replaced 
the fish. By tacit agreement no reference w T as made 
to his errand or hint given of its success or non-suc- 
cess, and Anne understood that Mrs. Host would be 
her informant when the time came. 

They talked of indifferent subjects — a polo match 
at Hurlingham in which Captain Host was to take 
part, of the unseasonable coldness, of a review at 
Aldershot to which a foreign monarch had been in- 
vited. Anne felt in an uneasy agony. What had 
happened? Could he be so cheerful and meet her 
eyes so frankly if there were bad news? Or was the 
position unchanged? The meal, uncomfortable be- 
cause of the anxiety underlying the surface conver- 
sation, was over at last, and Anne was glad when 
Mrs. Host rose to lead the way into the drawing- 
room and Captain Host said — 

“I wonder if you would excuse my mother a mo- 
ment, Miss Moorhouse. I have something to tell her.” 

So Anne went to the drawing-room to drink the 
black coffee which the parlor-maid brought her on 
an Indian silver salver, and sat alone in the soft light 
of the deeply shaded electric lights and the glow of 
the fire. She was restless and unhappy. She wished 
vaguely that Mrs. Host’s friend had not a taste for 
Rossetti; anaemic and long-throated young women 
with expressions of wan and lovelorn idiocy lolled 
towards her out of every frame. 

Mrs. Host came in after what seemed to be a long 
time. 

“He has given in,” she said, real joy shining in 


THE LURE 


i55 

her young blue eyes. “There will be no action. Miss 
Moorhouse, my dear child, I am so glad!” 

The relief was so great that only at that moment 
did Anne realize what the tension had been. 

“Oh, I am grateful, I am thankful,” she said, with 
a little choke that was almost a sob. “You have both 
been good to us. I shall never forget it.” 

“Nonsense, my dear, I feel just as pleased as you. 
Peter was not very optimistic about it this morning. 
He said it was his plain duty to horsewhip that little 
cad for the way in which he has behaved. He tells 
me he carried war into the enemy’s camp with great 
success. Watson is to fetch his wife back to-morrow.” 

“And Tony ?” 

“Tony must be got out of the way somehow, im- 
mediately. You will see that yourself, my dear child. 
Peter thinks he can do something about it. He is 
going down to Aldershot to-morrow, and he will talk 
to your brother’s colonel about it. Colonel Alburton 
was at Harrow with Peter, and they are quite friend- 
ly. I believe Peter was his fag for a term. There is 
no reason why your brother should not be transferred 
to the battalion abroad, out of harm’s way.” She 
patted Anne’s arm kindly. “Oh, child, I am glad for 
you! I think really that we are out of the wood at 
last. My son is coming in; we will not talk of it 
before him.” 

The fiction was obviously that such matters were 
not to be discussed between the jeune fille and the 
young man. There was something almost comic in 
the pretence, but Anne could not but observe it, 
though as he took her down to put her into the taxi- 
cab that was to convey her back to the boarding-house, 
she said with a vehemence that was greater than its 
repression — 

“I must thank you for what you have done.” 


THE LURE 


1 56 

Her shining eyes and tender mouth said more to 
express her gratitude than her words. He answered 
in almost the same phrase as his mother — 

“Nonsense, Miss Moorhouse, it was nothing more 
than ordinary duty. Red had crept up into the sallow 
sunburn of his cheeks. “I felt responsible in a way, 
you know, after our agreement that day.” 

“I never thought that it would mean letting you 
in for all this,” said Anne. 

“There was no ‘letting in/ Even if I had not 
promised, I should have stood by your brother against 
the not very scrupulous person who was at the bot- 
tom of the affair. I hate to see a youngster in the 
hands of a little brute like that. Well, now we can 
forget all about it. When will you come and see us 
again ?” 

She hesitated, and he framed the question differ- 
ently. “Could you manage to come to the theatre 
with us on Wednesday evening?” 

“Yes,” said Anne, thinking. She added more shyly, 
“It is very kind of you to ask me.” 

“My mother would like to see a good deal of you 
while we are in town, if you can spare the time,” 
he said, as if he were begging the favor of her. 
“And so would I — if I may — before I go back into 
exile.” 

“When is that?” asked Anne, as she got into the 
taxi. 

“In about three weeks.” 

“But I envy you — going back into the heat, after 
this,” said Anne, with conventional lightness, obey- 
ing she knew not what feminine instinct of retreat. 
“Oh — please tell him Gordon Street, 45a,” she added, 
seeing the chauffeur’s inquiring face. 

Good-nights were said. The taxi-cab jerked off 
just as Captain Host withdrew his hand and closed 


THE LURE 


157 

the door, and sped into the chill and darkness of the 
early June evening. 

“I wonder,” he said, under his breath, looking down 
the street after its brown and disappearing back. 


CHAPTER XVI 


T HE Pays du Tendre is a country in which the 
traveller’s sense of proportion vanishes; the 
more completely the longer his sojourn in it. 
Mountains become molehills ; molehills, mountains ; 
perilous gulfs take on the appearance of cracks, and 
fissures seem yawning chasms. Now this is a pity, 
because if dangers avoided are often visionary, the 
dangers plunged into without recognition are corre- 
spondingly real, and may be fraught with grievous 
consequences. But no map or survey has ever been 
made of its features and outlines, for the reason that 
to no two travellers does it present the same aspect. 

To Anne, therefore, inexperienced pilgrim as she 
was, all her companion’s road knowledge was of little 
avail. Indeed, there were many occasions when he 
himself was at fault. He was not accustomed to the 
demi-vierge type of adventure. Impetuous as he was, 
he had also avoided the unmarried woman, if she wore 
the badges of social respectability, as being dangerous 
game. To watch Anne’s emotional development, to 
know himself the first and only man on her horizon, 
and withal to persuade himself and her that there 
was nothing more in his ardent companionship than 
tender friendship, nothing more reprehensible in their 
mutual relationship than the fact that custom made 
it rare between the sexes, needed new methods, new 
ingenuity, new tactics. His sense of humor did not 
desert him. He recognized that they were both near 
i 5 8 


THE LURE 


U9 


the danger-mark, and kept a certain watch over him- 
self lest he should overstep the limits which his pru- 
dence set. 

“My dear Huntly, you look as if you were in love 
with some one,” said Lady Esmeralda to him one 
evening. 

“With you,” he retorted, promptly. 

“Nonsense. I’m a mere habit. You’re fond of 
me, and no other woman could have kept you amused 
for three consecutive years, but as for taking that 
expression in your eyes to myself. ... You looked 
sentimental, all far-away. You can’t deceive me, 
who’ve known you in every mood. Heaven gave you 
the appearance of a Drury Lane hero, I admit, but 
that doesn’t altogether excuse it.” 

“Inadvertently. I apologize.” 

“Who is she? The American woman?” 

He smiled. 

“I’m not jealous, Huntly, dear. I don’t suppose 
for a minute that you’re faithful to me, and I don’t 
suppose I should be any fonder of you if you were. 
But sentiment doesn’t become you. Besides, it is 
dangerous at your age.” 

“Why so?” 

“Approaching senility,” she returned, brutally, light- 
ing his cigarette for him from a silver pocket lamp. 
“It’s the dangerous age that you’re at. One has to 
keep watching the bald spot on one’s head, and the 
danger place in one’s susceptibilities.” 

His hand went up mechanically to the classic scalp. 

“It’s there,” she assured him. 

He felt slightly irritated. To come out of the in- 
censed atmosphere of a brief interview with Anne, 
whose splendid youth was at his feet, into the sharp 
atmosphere of home-truths, jarred upon him. 

He had asked Anne to go to the Coliseum with him 


160 THE LURE 

that night to see Sarah Bernhardt. She refused at 
first, and then gave in with the half-shy, deer-like 
reticence which was often her attitude with him. 
Whenever he kissed her, he knew that the virginal 
soul within her shrank back, as the sensitive corolla 
of an evening primrose closes before the morning sun. 
The hardihood of his arguments succeeded in lull- 
ing her misgivings, and in lending countenance to the 
impulse of the new-born womanhood in her, which 
acknowledged him as the master and lord of her heart. 
But this virginal soul of hers was responsible for her 
withdrawals, sudden coldnesses, silences, refusals. 
She was an instrument upon which a string might 
snap at any moment, even when she showed herself 
most responsive to his master-touch. He was in- 
trigued, piqued, enflamed. There were none of the 
elements of the usual flirtation about this incident. 
There is an Oriental in every man, the Oriental that 
finds a special delight in assailing what has been hith- 
erto inviolable, in handling the opening bud, in the 
subjugating what was hitherto untamed. It was the 
Turk in this man that was stirred, and he experienced 
an odd depth of passion, the tantalized desire of pos- 
session provoked by the hedge of “must nots” which 
surrounded Anne. Confound it! Was he in danger 
of sentimentality, as Lady Esmeralda had hinted? 
He was far too systematically selfish to endanger his 
own peace of mind; but there might be consequences 
inconvenient to himself if he endangered Anne’s too 
far. 

She met him in the vestibule of the brightly-lit 
place, a tall, slight, slim-throated figure; her eyes — 
the orchard-stealing eyes — alight with pleasure as she 
saw him. 

Goss threw off responsibility with the airy resolve 
that to-night was sufficient unto itself. Who, in 


THE LURE 


161 


Heaven’s name, had appointed him protector of any 
young woman against herself? By agreement this 
flirtation was not serious, and she was an attractive 
girl in love with him — it was not his part to play the 
prude, hang it! 

Anne was gay. Captain Host had told her that 
her brother was to be transferred to Alexandria. The 
news removed a great anxiety from her shoulders. 
She was full of the joy of living. Goss was with 
her; she was exultant and glad in his friendship. He 
was in his most irresistible mood, debonair, voluble, 
extremely handsome, full of the good temper of the 
man who has dined well and is perfectly content with 
his companion. His eyes told her so throughout the 
evening, and sent a thrill through her nerves. She 
had succeeded in banishing the bogies of self-distrust 
and conscience from her path, and accepted his soph- 
istries light-heartedly. The very merriness of their 
talk seemed to make the affair wholesome and per- 
missible. 

When the lights had gone low and he kissed the 
nape of her neck in the darkness of the box, she was 
only conscious of the mad rush of idolatry and ten- 
derness for her friend. As he had said, what harm 
could there be in a friendship which stirred the high- 
est and warmest chords of her being? 

The great French actress played on the girl’s al- 
ready tensely strung nerves and emotions. Goss, 
with his fine profile and disquieting personality, sat 
beside her, his hand against hers in the shadow of the 
curtain, moving her soul with unknown forces. It 
seemed part of the realm of stars and song into which 
her mood had lifted her when, during the drive home, 
without speaking a word, he put his arm around her 
in the first possible empty street, and kissed her over 
and over again on the lips she had refused him so 


i6z 


THE LURE 


often. The thin end of the wedge had already en- 
tered, the leverage he brought to bear had begun to 
prise open the passion which her breeding kept locked 
in her soul. 

Goss himself, carried off his feet, forgot the danger 
mark. He let the smiling mask of caressing friend- 
ship go. She was delicious; she was maddening in 
this melting mood. 

“We’re not going back,” he said in her ear. “I 
can’t let you go like this. Anne, you’re intoxicating ; 
you’re sweet; you are provoking; you’ll make me 
crazy. Where can we go for an hour? I’ll be very 
good; I’ll observe all our compact. But I want to 
kiss you, and kiss you, and kiss you.” 

His sudden passion almost frightened Anne. The 
tone of urbane mockery which gave her a sense of 
security was gone. 

“We mustn’t,” she said, faintly. 

“To the office! I have the key.” 

“No, no; we mustn’t!” 

“And our agreement!” he said impatiently. “Hasn’t 
it worked so far? You value our friendship; I saw 
it in your eyes to-night. It means something to you. 
Doesn’t it?” 

His words came from the throbbing hollow of her 
throat to which he had pressed his lips. 

“Oh, don’t, don’t!” said Anne, quivering. “You 
know it means something.” 

“A little?” 

“No.” 

“A great deal, little girl?” he whispered, holding 
her tightly. 

“Oh, you know it does.” 

“Say it.” 

“All the world!” she cried. 

As she said it, she knew, with the sickening feeling 


THE LURE 163 

of one who finds himself suddenly on the brink of an 
abyss, that she meant it. 

“You darling — you darling girl !” 

She drew back, steadied by sudden vision of her 
own soul. 

“Please — please don’t kiss me!” 

“Why shouldn’t I?” he asked, recklessly. “You 
like it. Don’t start being a prude again, Lady Laven- 
der. What do conventions matter? They are the 
bugbears set up to prevent the unintelligent from fall- 
ing over precipices. You and I don’t need them.” 

He leant forward to put his head out of the win- 
dow. She dragged him back with all her force. 

“What are you doing?” 

“I’m going to tell him to drive to Brooke Street.” 

“No, no!” said Anne, with the stubbornness she 
was capable of even at a moment when she was no 
longer her sane self. “I shall not get out, if you do.” 

“Yes, you will, little girl.” 

“I shall not ,” she said with a passionate note in 
her voice. “I mean what I say. I am going home, 
now, at once.” 

“Why won’t you?” 

“It is not right. We mustn’t. . . . We can’t.” 

He cooled in a moment, and looked at her mock- 
ingly. 

“Of course, if you are going to be Brittanic about 
it, to destroy our little idyll ” 

“I can’t argue with you,” said Anne, a swelling 
lump in her throat. 

“Don’t. It’s vulgar. But, seriously, darling, why 
do you refuse? No one is going to see us; I should 
not have suggested it if I had thought it would be 
dangerous. Surely it would not hurt you to spend 
a quarter of an hour longer in my company? I want 
to take my little girl into my arms and say all the 


164 


THE LURE 


delicious things to her that one friend can say to an- 
other, without this terribly damping and prosaic fear 
of every electric-light and passer-by.” 

“It isn’t that I’m afraid of being seen,” she said 
in desperation. Her voice shook. She temporized: 
“Not to-night, please.” 

“You don’t trust me,” he said, with an anger that 
was real. 

“I do, I do!” 

“Then why ” 

“I can’t tell you. . . .I’m tired. ... I want to get 
home.” 

They were, as a matter of fact, already in Russell 
Square. 

He relapsed into silence, and the next moment the 
car stopped at Gordon Street. 

“Good-night,” she said, timidly laying her hand on 
his. 

“Good-night,” he returned with indifferent polite- 
ness. 

“You are angry with me ” she said. 

He caught the miserable note in her voice. 

“Come back with me now.” 

“I can’t.” 

He simply put his head out of the taxi to give his 
Kensington address to the waiting driver, and the car 
buzzed off. 

Anne’s heart ached. 

She had made him angry ; made him think that she 
had lost confidence in him. It was herself in whom she 
had lost confidence. With that cry of “More than 
all the world,” her blinded reason had opened its eyes 
as to what was going on. She loved Goss. This pays 
du tendre business, this masquerading platonism was 
a fraud. They were simply endeavoring to throw 
sand in each other’s eyes ; agreeing to call black white ; 


THE LURE 


165 

and she could delude her eyesight no longer. In hard 
fact, she was only a girl who was allowing a man 
who could never make legitimate love to her the fam- 
iliarities which only a lover takes. There was the 
sordid, ugly truth. But she loved him; the ache in 
her throat told her how tragically empty the world 
would seem without him. That she could never love 
any other man she was certain with the positivism and 
monotheistic idolatry of youth for love when it comes 
for the first time. Dreary years of emptiness stretched 
out before her vision as they have 4 stretched be- 
fore the fancy of other young and ardent natures. 
She would write him a letter to-morrow morning 
which would be the gray beginning. All night 
through she tossed and turned from side to side, 
composing the letter. But in the morning, when, still 
pale and exalted from her night’s vigil, she sat down 
to pen the well-expressed phrases she had prepared 
the night before, she only succeeded in writing — 

“I must not see you alone again. I can’t keep up 
the pretence of friendship, and anything else is im- 
possible. 

“Yours sincerely, 

“A. M.” 

Then, thinking that this was too hard an expres- 
sion of her renunciation, and sounded childishly stiff, 
she re-wrote it, beginning “Dear” and signing “Yours 
always, A.” She also added a postscript, “I trust 
you, but I do not trust myself. Forgive me, please.” 

As it happened, she did not see him all that morn- 
ing. The note, marked “Personal,” had been placed 
on his desk with a pile of others, but he had only 
telephoned through to his secretary, and had not put 
in an appearance as yet. 


1 66 


THE LURE 


They were already at work upon the July number, 
for the June number had made its appearance with- 
out mishap. 

Miss Neville informed Anne abruptly, when they 
found themselves alone for a moment before the 
lunch hour, that she was leaving the staff at the end 
of next week. 

“Oh — why?” exclaimed Anne, blankly. 

“Another post,” said Miss Neville. 

“On what?” 

“The Sportswoman 

“But I thought you said the salary ” 

“It’s less than here. . . . Look here, my child, if 
you leave this gorgeous palace what will you think of 
doing ?” 

“I’m not leaving it.” 

“I know I can trust you to hold your tongue if I 
tell you about something. The Orb will go bankrupt 
within the next three months unless a miracle hap- 
pens. It mayn’t last as long. I know it’s doomed 
for a certainty.” 

“It can’t!” said Anne, aghast. “Why, it seems so 
prosperous.” 

“It couldn’t very well do anything else. . . . Be- 
sides, I assure you I’m not going on guesswork.” 

“But Mr. Goss!” Anne exclaimed, involuntarily. 

“Bless you, you need waste no pity on him. He 
will have done remarkably well out of it. Lavish 
your pity on the shareholders if you like! Meantime, 
don’t breathe a word. But if I were you, I should 
look out for a fresh berth. I’ll keep my ears open 
for you.” 

“You are very kind. But I couldn’t think of leav- 
ing here until I had to. It would seem like a dis- 
loyalty.” 

“You will bring sentiment into work,” said Miss 


THE LURE 


167 

Neville. “Do you suppose Goss would consider twice 
if he wanted to give you or me a week’s notice? Do 
you suppose he would feel himself under any obliga- 
tion to us for the hours of overtime, and the nerve 
and sinew we’ve lavished upon this wretched Orb , if 
he found it to his advantage to get rid of us?” 

“I think you are consistently unfair to him/’ said 
Anne, showing the red flag in her cheeks. 

“Well, we won’t argue about him. Still, if you 
are dependent upon yourself for your daily bread and 
butter, I think it is nothing more than your duty to 
be on the lookout for something else. Please your- 
self! Won’t you come and lunch with me, now? 
You’re looking very fagged out. I told you you 
wouldn’t stand the pace if you went on as you insist 
on doing. What are you doing this afternoon?” 

“Only a garden-party, and in the evening a Wom- 
an’s Political Union meeting. Mr. Goss wants a 
woman’s suffrage page, edited by the Countess of 
Somebody. I’m to give rather a full report.” 

“You must have a substantial lunch, then. You 
look as if you had a headache.” 

“I have, rather. But please let me pay for my 
own,” said Anne. She felt that Miss Neville’s crisp 
and friendly talk would keep her mind employed, at 
least. 

“We’ll fight the payment out after the meal.” 

Her words lingered uncomfortably in Anne’s mem- 
ory. If it were true! Miss Neville was not the sort 
of woman to rob herself of a good salary on account 
of a mere canard. 

But Goss! Were his magnificent dreams, like the 
pack of cards in Alice in Wonderland , to come tum- 
bling about his ears ? He had not spoken to her late- 
ly about the Orb in the old, confident, grandiose way. 
She had taken this as a sign of prosperity beyond 


1 68 


THE LURE 


question. And this, the moment when he was threat- 
ened with the ruin of his dearly loved and nourished 
project, was the moment in which she had chosen to 
forbid herself to him. She longed more than ever, 
with a woman’s exaggerated idea of the value of the 
personal factor, to put her arms about his neck and 
say, recklessly, “What does it matter? Here am I. 
I take back all I said. Use my sympathy and love 
as you will.” 

She found two notes waiting for her when she re- 
turned to the office after her journey to Kensington 
in the afternoon. The one she opened first was from 
her Aunt Helen. 

“Dearest Anne, 

“I’ve heard a dreadful whisper that the Orb is not 
quite safe as to payment. As I haven’t had a single 
sou up to now, what should I do? I simply can’t 
afford to lose all that money. Do write 

“Your distracted Aunt Helen.” 

The other was from Goss, scribbled in pencil. 

“I acquiesce. But you will spare me a good-by 
afternoon? Say Sunday.” 

Could she do so in safety? She decided she could. 
She was all the more ready to yield to him, because 
of these vague and disturbing rumors about the Orb . 
Did he know what they were saying? Of course, he 
must be aware that things were in a critical state, in 
spite of his unruffled calm. 

She wrote back to him — 

“Yes, I can spare the good-by afternoon — Sunday. 
Where? A.” 


THE LURE 


169 

Nevertheless, she was determined that this good- 
by should be final. There was no other way. Her 
previous determination to put him out of her thoughts 
had not been the steady, blank and miserable resolve 
that now actuated her. If Anne had the Moorhouse 
impetuosity, she had also the Moorhouse grit. She 
recognized that they could travel no further together. 
This time she would oppose his reasoning with the 
instinct that was stronger than reason, an instinct 
that warned her they were near the Rubicon, and that 
once crossed, she would lose her self-respect. 

The next morning she met him on the stairs. He 
greeted her with a studied and composed “Good- 
morning, Miss Moorhouse,” and added beneath his 
breath, “Eleven o’clock, Victoria. Bookstall, Brigh- 
ton line.” 

She had only time to nod. 


CHAPTER XVII 


A NNE found the company of the Hosts some- 
how refreshing and wholesome. She discov- 
ered that she had spent a good deal of time 
in their flat. Captain Host was usually there; some- 
times one or two of his friends, for a good many sol- 
diers and officials in the service of the Anglo-Egyptian 
Government were home on summer leave. They 
were sunburnt men, but not unlike school-boys on 
their holidays. Few remained long in town after 
they had made the round of the theatres, but went to 
join their respective people; to play golf, tennis, 
cricket, and try to forget, as they said, that there was 
such a person as the nigger or such a language as 
Arabic. Not that they were not keen on their work, 
and, in spite of the resolution chronicled above, Anne 
sometimes heard one or other of them discussing with 
Host “that little flare-up in Southern Kordofan” or 
elsewhere, or an expedition into Abyssinia or Darfur. 
The wildest adventures and escapes seemed to come 
into the day’s work, it seemed to Anne, without caus- 
ing surprise to any one. 

It was a relief to meet Host and his friends after 
the tension of her intercourse with Goss. Everything 
else apart, Goss was utterly unlike the men to whom 
she was accustomed. With Host she felt the free- 
dom and ease she might have felt with her old friend 
the elderly colonel at home, or Piggy, or Tony. There 
was a pleasant sense of comradeship between them. 
170 


THE LURE 


171 

And he had a quiet and unassertive way of looking’ 
after her and anticipating minor wishes which was 
soothing. She felt it pleasant after the society of 
Mr. Thompson, of the men she met daily in the 
boarding-house, and even of Goss himself, who never 
dreamt of asking her if he might smoke, to be with 
a man who never lit a cigarette in her presence with- 
out her permission. She was back in the world she 
understood, where everything was well-ordered, 
smooth and fore-ordained. She never knew what 
Goss would do next. She always knew what Captain 
Host would do, as far as his conduct to his mother 
or herself was concerned, and that it would be “the 
right thing.” Not that he was inanely conventional, 
but it would have been against his code to have be- 
haved eccentrically to her or any one. That he had 
brain, she was sure, but he did not talk brilliantly. 
He never indulged in paradox or epigram. That he 
had brought law and order, almost single-handed, 
into a lawless and distant province of the Bahr-el- 
Ghazal, she gathered not so much from his occasional 
modest narratives, or those of his friends, but from 
casual facts mentioned in the course of a story — facts 
to which he attached no importance. 

“He is frightfully English, but undoubtedly a 
dear,” was her mental criticism of him. To be “fright- 
fully English” was a new crime in her category, 
dating from the time when Goss had dawned upon 
her horizon. No one could call Goss that, any more 
than they would call George Bernard Shaw or Israel 
Zangwill “British.” The unEnglishness of Goss was 
a quality apart from his partly Irish blood. It lay 
in his assertive individualism. With him the “I am 
I” was a grandiose declaration of his, Huntly Goss’s, 
right to live as he pleased. Host, on the other hand, 
suppressed his personality as a personality. He was 


172 


THE LURE 


not Peter Host, but Captain Host, the servant of his 
country, a unit in an orderly whole, a representative 
of a vast system of empire. As a private being, he 
had no particular ambition to impress himself on so- 
ciety, or to be anything but inconspicuous. He had 
a tendency to regard with a quiet but disgusted sus- 
picion those who did make themselves conspicuous. 
Anne knew instinctively that he would not under- 
stand Goss in the least. 

It was Sunday, the day of her rendezvous with 
Goss. While she told herself with unrelenting deter- 
mination that this was to be the very last time that 
she was to meet him in secret, her heart beat faster 
for the knowledge that there was this “once more.” 
She was forewarned of all the difficulty she would 
have in withstanding his unanswerable arguments — 
arguments which never failed to put things in the 
light he desired. 

Goss himself was not in doubt as to the outcome 
of the conflict. He undervalued Anne's strength of 
purpose; he was accustomed to make easy conquests, 
to find women not difficult to convince if their hearts 
were already traitors to his cause. Critical as his 
business affairs were at this juncture, whatever part 
of him was human just now was Anne’s. He was as 
much in love with her as he had leisure to be. Lady 
Esmeralda had adopted that tiresome tone of propri- 
etorship which is as annoying in an illegal as in a 
legal relationship. Mrs. Van Diep, around whom he 
had fluttered considerably in the new year, had ap- 
parently disappeared — he had had no word from her, 
and there was no one else for the time on his horizon, 
limited as it was by the press of business matters; 
certainly no one as charming and unique as Anne. 
She was to be a writing woman: emotional experi- 
ence is necessary for a writing woman; he might as 


THE LURE 


i73 


well furnish it himself as any other man, seeing Anne 
was already in love with him. His faint scruples, 
based more on advisability than on conscience, disap- 
peared. Besides, it would be easy to withdraw later 
— the Orb could only hold out a few weeks at best 
before the crash came, and then their paths might 
separate. Much might happen in the interim. The 
desire of conquering her evasive and wavering spirit 
was strong in him. 

He had slept badly. Some business documents had 
not been agreeable reading. It would need all his 
ingenuity to prepare answers to some awkward cate- 
chisms to which he might be put by shareholders. It 
was his plan to anticipate every eventuality. The 
sun, streaming into his room on Sunday morning at 
a quarter to eight, found him in an evil humor, damn- 
ing all the world, including Anne when his appoint- 
ment with her occurred to his waking mind. Damn 
her for a petulant, contrary little hussy. He sum- 
moned his man earlier than usual on Sundays, dressed, 
bathed and breakfasted. 

The flat was practically his wife's; his own finances 
fluctuated. In spite of the restricted space, he con- 
trived not to see more of his hostages to fortune than 
was necessary, although it was difficult to avoid alto- 
gether his wife’s mute and determined efforts to take 
some share in his social life. 

“Is Mrs. Goss up yet, Jellaby?” he asked. 

“No, sir. Mr. Austin is up.” 

Goss’s eyebrows contracted slightly. His idiot step- 
son was a subject intensely irritating to him. 

It was still early, and he determined to walk across 
Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. He would 
take some business papers with him. He could have 
wished that his appointment with Anne had been 
on another day; he was not in an ardent mood 


174 


THE LURE 


this morning — at forty a sleepless night produces a 
predisposition to dyspepsia rather than to lovemak- 
ing. 

He walked along briskly. London was in her love- 
liest June humor. A light heat mist lent the gardens 
a Corot-like enchantment. The green leaves were still 
fresh, the flowers perfection; but for the smuttiness 
of the sheep that nibbled the fine grass, he might have 
fancied himself in the country. Not that he ever 
noticed scenery. But he was susceptible to atmos- 
phere, and the freshness of the morning gradually 
sent his spirits up. He was sufficiently Celtic never 
to be long the victim of depression. 

Both the gardens and the park were empty at this 
comparatively early hour except for a few church- 
goers, a few automobiles, a few idlers. He walked 
along Rotten Row, mentally composing a letter to 
Lord Fleet, who promised to make himself disagree- 
able. 

Suddenly a motor-car stopped in the beaten track, 
and an American voice said — 

“Why, good-morning, Mr. Goss. I thought I 
should find myself the most early person in London, 
but I’m mistaken.” 

It was Mrs. Van Diep, a clear case of telepathy, 
since he had been thinking of her only the night be- 
fore. He told her so, reproachfully. 

“Why, you don’t say!” she cried, gaily. “The fact 
is, I went over in March or thereabouts for a week- 
end to Paris to buy some clothes, and I went on to 
stay with some people in Normandy, and I’ve been 
having the loveliest time, so I simply couldn’t get 
back. But I’m not to blame if you haven’t seen me 
sooner. I saw you, with a very nice girl who ought 
to have been your niece, in a box at the Coliseum 
as long ago as last Monday or Tuesday.” 


THE LURE 


i75 

“You’ve been here since Monday, and I only meet 
you now — by accident.” 

“That’s nice of you. To be so really indignant, I 
mean. It sounded as if London were a Sahara with- 
out me, and that’s frightfully flattering.” 

“It sounded the truth.” 

“Well, let me drive you somewhere. It’s a glorious 
morning.” 

“I have an appointment at eleven.” 

“It’s not ten yet. Come and see how nicely I’ll 
drive you. This is my De Dion Bouton, the new 
one. 

She looked all dimples and sparkle. Goss felt the 
relief of a man who has been living up to false stand- 
ards. He was not likely to refuse such an offer. 

“You little abomination,” he said, looking di- 
rectly into her eyes. “London has been dull without 
you.” 

“My dear man, I was getting frightened of you. It 
was time I regained my equilibrium somewhere. You 
were making such love to me.” 

“I shall make love to you again.” 

“I can’t help that,” she said, turning a roguish and 
provoking glance to his face. “I didn’t mean to meet 
you this morning. It was a clear case of fate. I’m 
a dreadful fatalist. I think I shall turn Mahom- 
medan.” 

“It’s a religion with points.” 

“Oh, you are one already — minus the prayer and 
fasting. Dear me, you know you’re a dangerous per- 
son; when you look at me that way, it has an effect 
on my nerves. I didn’t steer that corner a bit clev- 
erly.” 

“What a pretty little humbug it is!” said Goss. 

“Don’t be rude to me. You never talk to me with 
proper respect.” 


THE LURE 


176 

“Because you are one of the wholly delightful 
women one should never address with proper respect.” 

“Is your niece one of those women, too?” 

“My niece?” 

“Yes, that girl you were with at the Coliseum. You 
did not look a bit uncle-ish with her. What a good 
word, isn't it? I made it up on the spot. Who is 
she; do tell me?” 

“She is an ingenue, dear lady. A very clever girl.” 

“Clever to be ingenue, or ingenue to be clever? 
Don’t think that by using that impartial sort of voice 
you can disguise the fact that you like her very much. 
I had my opera-glasses on your face.” 

“Eavesdropper! But you are wrong. I have a 
wholesome dread of the jeune filled 

He did not think it necessary to add that he was 
on his way to meet her. 

“I’m glad of that. It is frightfully entangling to 
flirt with them, I know.” 

“How do you know?” 

“I was one myself once, you know.” 

“No; really?” 

“Yes. My poor husband got terribly entangled 
with me. I never believe that he meant to.” 

“Never speak evil of the departed,” said Goss. 
“Excuse me, Mrs. Van Diep, but you are responsible 
for the flippant tone.” 

She sighed. “Yes; it’s one of my worst faults. 
But it does seem ridiculous that one cannot speak in 
anything but the most pious of tones when one men- 
tions a dead person. If you’d known Tommy, you’d 
see how ridiculous it is. He was never taken seri- 
ously in life, poor dear.” 

“Where are you going?” 

“To Hampstead.” 

“But I’ve an appointment ... at Victoria.” 


THE LURE 


177 


“Well, there’s time enough. You can be late, if 
it’s a man, can’t you? If it’s a woman, you can revile 
the Sunday service on the underground.” 

Anne was at the big bookstall at Victoria Station 
a full quarter of an hour before her time. She 
watched the big hands of the station clock creep up 
to eleven. Goss had not appeared. At a quarter past 
eleven she grew uneasy. The bookstall was closed 
as it was Sunday; a man was selling papers to Sun- 
day travellers on a makeshift wooden stand on trestles 
near by. She went up to him and asked if there were 
another bookstall. 

“They’re none of ’em open on Sundays, miss.” 

“But is there another? I am to meet some one at 
a bookstall in the station.” 

“There’s a little one by the entrance over there. 
This is the main bookstall.” 

She decided it was safer to stay where she was. 
While hunting up the other bookstall, she might miss 
him. She waited patiently. Half-past eleven. Quar- 
ter to twelve. She had been at her post an hour. 

He surely could not be three-quarters of an hour 
late ! There must be some mistake. With a gnawing 
pain at her heart, she walked slowly away, and out 
of the station. 

A flower-stall stands just outside the station. It 
caught her eye with its big jars full of early roses. 
A car was drawn up by the curb, the door open; the 
driver, a pretty woman, leaning forward to converse 
with a man who stood with one foot on the step, his 
back to Anne. She recognized him immediately. It 
was Goss. 

He had evidently been buying his companion a 
bunch of pink carnations, for she was taking them 
from his hand, and thanking him effusively. Anne 


THE LURE 


178 

caught the American accent, not too pronounced to 
be unbecoming to so charming a person. 

“And now go right in and make your cleverest 
apologies. If it’s a man he’s probably gone, swear- 
ing at you; if it’s a woman, she may be there still 
if she’s very much in love with you — and you’ll have 
to libel the Inner Circle Railway. . . . The day after 
to-morrow, eight o’clock, at the Ritz. You don’t de- 
serve it, but I shan’t forget. . . . Good-by.” 

She touched a lever, smiled and nodded, and the 
car glided forward until she had manipulated it 
through the waiting vehicles. 

A sudden impulse had made Anne shrink out of 
sight. She saw Goss, with his confident, broad- 
shouldered walk, enter the station. 

Then she beckoned a waiting taxi-cab, sprang in, 
and directed the man to the boarding-house, where 
a hot Sunday lunch, affable Cockney conversation, 
and best clothes, would remind her that she was in a 
Sabbath-keeping country. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


H UNTLY GOSS had long ago discovered a 
great secret — that in order to render an ex- 
cuse for a lie successful, the main ingredient 
must be truth. Not finding Anne, he immediately 
drew the conclusion that she had grown tired of wait- 
ing, and had gone away. 

It did not cause him the annoyance that he might 
have felt had Mrs. Van Diep not appeared above his 
horizon again. But one cause of his success with 
women was that he never left them, if it could be 
helped with any degree of ease, with a sense of in- 
jury. Experience had taught him that a woman 
whose pride has been injured is at bottom only too 
eager to admit that she herself has been at fault, 
rather than have the humiliating knowledge that she 
has been insulted. To have to accord pardon is more 
mortifying to a woman in love than to ask it. 

He bought a Referee , sat down on a seat and read 
it for exactly ten minutes. Then he taxi’d home, and, 
finding himself early for lunch, scribbled a note to 
her then and there, addressing it to Gordon Street. 

“My Dearest Littlest Girl, 

“I have just been waiting a long time by the book- 
stall at Victoria in the hope you would turn up. I 
was rather late, owing to the fact that a woman I 
am anxious to propitiate for business reasons caught 
me on the way and insisted on quarreling with me. 
I couldn’t get away without rousing her suspicions, 
179 


i8o 


THE LURE 


and, as I told her I was meeting a man, you will un- 
derstand that she had no scruples in delaying me. 

“Could you not have waited for me a little? I 
did not expect you to forsake your post as easily as 
that. 

“But, perhaps, dear Lady Lavender, you are right, 
and it had better be good-by. I am growing a great 
deal too fond of you, and I would not bring unhap- 
piness into your life for all the green world. We 
have had a charming excursion into the Pays du Ten- 
dre, which will remain in my memory long after you 
have followed younger and freer Knights of Eros on 
more adventurous journeys. They will blot out the 
memory of a certain elderly Don Juan, who led you 
respectfully by the hand a little way over beaten paths. 
But you bear me no grudge, do you? 

“You have elected to desert me. It would be selfish 
to clamor against your decision. 

“My heart’s homage to you, dear and beautiful 
person.” 

He did not sign the letter. 

Anne had that simplicity and bigness of soul which 
is characteristic of women who will one day have 
the mother-nature developed within them. She read 
the letter with tear-stained eyes, and reinstated her 
idol in the niche. Hot impulse urged her to write a 
reply showing the whole tenderness of her heart, the 
whole loyalty of her nature, the impossibility that 
she could ever again tread the enchanted territory 
into which he had lured her. 

Having written it, she tore it up, with the feeling 
that she was lacerating something pulsating and human. 
Then she burned it, together with his letter, over a 
candle. It seemed to her that she had burnt her 


THE LURE 


1 8 1 


youth in the smoky flame, and that existence could 
offer nothing more attractive henceforward than the 
charred and tinkling fragments which fell into the 
base of the candlestick. 

But she was Moorhouse enough to despise herself 
for self-pity. If the world held nothing but ashes, 
she was young, and she meant to live out her life in 
the best way she could, without sitting to moan on 
the ash-pit. She went down to dinner that night with 
a face that showed no trace of tears, and listened to 
Mr. Hertz’s “h”-less anecdotes with patient attention. 
And, such is the elasticity of youth, she was surprised 
at herself for the hysterical impulse to laugh that 
overcame her when he absently addressed her as 
“Miss,” and then corrected himself to the “Miss Moor- 
’ouse” suitable to the social equality which reigned at 
the common table. 

Luckily for Anne’s nerves, Goss absented himself 
a good deal from the offices in Brooke Street during 
the week that followed. She tried to avoid thinking 
— which must result in the numb and unreasoning 
pain of a heartache — by accepting as many invitations 
of the Hosts for the evenings when she found her- 
self unemployed, as she could. 

“I’m afraid your work is trying you now that the 
hot weather has set in,” Mrs. Host observed. “You 
look worn out, child. Can’t you get a few days of 
absolute rest?” 

“I’m not really tired. I’m one of those really 
tough people who look delicate,” smiled Anne, con- 
scious of the black rings beneath her eyes which told 
of feverish and sleepless nights. 

“I was wondering if you are set upon continuing 
your journalism, or whether, perhaps, you would ” 

“It is not fair to ask you/’ she said. “There are 


182 


THE LURE 


so many excitements in your journalistic life. . . . 
Yet if you did think of it, you should have time for 
writing every day.” 

Anne looked at her, astonished. 

“I was talking it over with Peter last night,” Mrs. 
Host went on, che color in her apple cheeks deepen- 
ing. “He is going to speak to you about it himself, 
I think. You see, it grows harder for me every time 
that Peter goes away. It is foolish, but I find my- 
self trotting up to his bedroom and turning over his 
pyjamas and warm things — he doesn’t take them back 
with him, and shedding a few, salt, old woman’s tears 
over them in spite of all the names that I call myself. 
You don’t know, perhaps, the mother’s ache that 
comes of an empty room, but it is difficult to bear, 
especially when one is old and lonely. What I was 
wanting to suggest was this: I wondered if you would 
ever give up your journalism for the time and come 
back with me to Aldershot when Peter goes? You 
should have exactly the same dress money, my dear, 
of course, and time to write and a little room to write 
in. I think I could give you a fairly good time. 
There are minor gaieties in Aldershot, you know, and 
I should take you out exactly as if you were my own 
daughter.” 

There was something wistful in her tone that went 
to the girl’s heart. 

“Don’t say yes until you’ve thought it over well,” 
she added, kissing Anne, who was wrapped in a cloak 
preparatory to going home. “And don’t think you 
ought to accept just to please me. I want you to 
consult your own interests. Tell me when you 
come to-morrow. This is Peter’s last week, you 
know.” 

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have these last 
days alone with Captain Host?” Anne insisted. 


THE LURE 183 

“We both look on you as one of us. Peter will 
be disappointed if you don’t come.” 

Captain Host repeated the same proposal on the 
way home. “If you could stand being down at Aider- 
shot, it would please the mater enormously. I never 
saw her so keen on any one as she is on you. And 

I should like to think that the two ” he hesitated ; 

“the two people I am fondest of are together.” 

Anne became hot with surprise. The very blue 
eyes that lit up the sunburnt face held something in 
them, when she lifted her startled brown ones, which 
was unmistakable. 

“I can’t ask you whether you would come out with 
me,” he went on, hurriedly, with an almost imper- 
ceptible note of emotion in his usually quiet voice. 
“It’s no place for a white woman — up there on the 
White Nile. But there’s a chance that I may get 
moved back to Khartoum. ... I am not asking you 
for an answer till then . . . but I’d like you to think 
it over . . . will you?” 

Anne shrank back with a movement of alarm. 

He was quick to notice it. 

“It is too much to expect you to say anything now.” 

“It is not that — I mean — there is some one else. 
I do like you ever so much, but I can’t let you 
think ” She broke off, helplessly. 

“You mean that you are not — free?” He hesitated 
before bringing out the word, but asked the question 
in much the same tone that he would have asked for 
bread and butter. But she knew him well enough to 
see that he was speaking from the most vital depths 
of his soul. 

“Yes, I’m free — if you mean engaged or married, 
or that sort of thing,” she replied swiftly, clutching 
at her trembling self-control. “It’s — it’s an affair 
which is over and done with — it could never have 


THE LURE 


184 

come to anything anyway. You see, he is married. 
. . . I can’t explain!” 

Tears rose in her throat. It sounded so trite, so 
sordid, in plain words. How could he, this person 
of a simple straightforward soul, read anything be- 
tween the lines of her disjointed phrases? She felt 
an intense desire to keep his esteem of her, this friend 
of her need. 

He asked no questions, but sat for a time in silence. 
Then he said, with quaint gravity — 

“I’m awfully sorry, Miss Moorhouse.” 

She had an hysterical impulse to laugh. 

“What for — that you said what you did? ... I 
suppose that I shouldn’t have told you about it — no 
one has known it up till now but me — but I feel some- 
how as if you were different, that I could tell you 
things that I can’t to outside people.” 

“I’m glad of that,” he said. “May I ask you one 
question — are you likely to have much to do with — 
your friend?” 

“No,” she answered. 

“Then don’t you think that you may forget 
things ?” 

“How am I to tell?” It was almost a question, 
and her lips were trembling a little. 

“I think somehow that you will,” he said gently. 
“Don’t think that because I have lived so long out 
of the world that I haven’t known something about 
human nature. I was once in love with a woman — 
I had it badly; I was pretty young at the time. She 
was married to a man I liked. I thought I should 
never forget. I haven’t in a way — yet I could meet 
her to-morrow without as much as an extra heart- 
beat about it, and I am in love with — well, you.” 

“In the same way?” she asked, quickly. 

“No; in quite a different way. I don’t think that 


THE LURE 185 

I could ever want any woman in the world in the 
same way that I want you.” 

He spoke in a manner that was almost matter-of- 
fact, as if stating an elemental axiom. 

She was glad, somehow. 

“There’s another thing I’d like to ask you,” he 
went on, after a pause. “Will you write to me some- 
times.” 

“Of course, I will. Will you write to me?” 

“That goes without saying.” 

He was silent for a little while, and she said shyly — 

“I should like to come to your mother, if she really 
means it about my living at Aldershot.” 

His eyes lighted up as he turned to her. 

“I am grateful to you for that. She has set her 
heart on it.” 

“I have set my heart on it, too,” said Anne. “I’ve 
never had a mother, and if you let me borrow yours 
in this way, the obligation isn’t on your side.” 

It was the solution of the problem of the past mis- 
erable days. The office was daily more intolerable 
to her. To see Goss, even in the distance, to catch 
his voice, meet him occasionally, was nothing less 
than torture to her. The wound was an open one. 
The quiet and pleasant house at Aldershot, with its 
mistress, this old woman who stood for everything 
that was kindly, lovely, and of good report, appeared 
to her as an asylum of refuge and peace. 


PART II 

CHAPTER I 

A WHITE donkey, of the sturdy breed produced 
by Luxor, trotted at a smart pace along one 
of the broad streets which cross Khartoum 
from end to end. A battalion of Sudanese soldiers, 
in charge of an Egyptian officer, had just passed in 
a cloud of dust, their feet marching to the rhythm of 
a Bersagliere march. The donkey’s shadow was dis- 
tinct and dark on the beaten sand as if it were itself 
a solid and tangible thing. The kites, swooping and 
wheeling half a furlong above in the clear desert air 
and intense African sunshine, had shadow doubles 
black as velvet which winged backwards and forwards 
over the yellow ground. 

The woman riding the donkey held a white and 
green parasol over her head, guiding the beast more 
by the touch of the reins against its neck than by 
the bit which no native donkey understands. There 
were few Europeans in view besides herself. An 
English engineer, sooty and grimed with oil and 
sweat, on his way to the public works; a pallid clerk 
on a hired donkey, his lean legs dangling stirrupless 
over a sheepskin saddle dyed a virulent green ; a red- 
faced sergeant fresh from Alexandria with the regi- 
ment that had just come up; an officer in khaki and 
sun-helmet cantering along in the distance, were all 
that she could see. 

Of natives, a couple of mahogany-colored brats, as 
naked as Mother Nature made them, were playing in 
the looser sand by the footpath; a couple of young 

is? 


1 8 8 


THE LURE 


Sudanese women, clad in the dark-blue tobe, black and 
comely, a corner of their robes held in their teeth 
by way of modesty, walked along with the grace of 
queens, each with a bundle on her head; a reverend 
sheikh, swarthy as a mulatto, whose slightly aquiline 
cast of features proclaimed his Arab blood, was gath- 
ered into a reverend bunch on the back of a small 
ass ; while a Greek merchant, in ready-made European 
clothes and a tarboosh, discoursed on the sidewalk to 
a couple of Egyptian officials. 

Anne Host was still sufficiently new to it to find 
it an intensely interesting kaleidoscope of Sudanese 
life. She had been married for just over a year, but 
had only been in Khartoum for two months. Captain 
Host had been transferred to the Intelligence Depart- 
ment at Khartoum six months after his arrival in the 
Sudan on the occasion when he left Anne with his 
mother at Aldershot. On his return to England the 
summer following, he had proposed to Anne Moor- 
house, and had been accepted. An illness prevented 
her from accompanying her husband that autumn to 
Khartoum, and it was not until nearly a year had 
passed, during which Mrs. Host had died of pneu- 
monia, that she was able to return with him to the 
Sudan. 

She herself was surprised at the change these two 
and a half years had wrought in her. At the time of 
her marriage she had not pretended to be in love with 
her husband, but she was fond of him as one is fond 
of a best friend. The life he offered her was a life 
which attracted her adventurous nature and strong 
vitality. She had a longing to go to places of the 
sun, to that vast Central Africa of which her husband 
had spoken to her. 

In Khartoum, frankly, she had been a little disap- 
pointed at first. The desert train, rushing through 


THE LURE 


189 

bare and featureless sands, occasionally broken by 
rocky hills hot and naked as iron; the brown mud 
villages set here and there in the waste, the sometime 
relief of tall, dusty palms, the greener for being in a 
place where the only colors were gold and brown and 
blue ; these, together with an atmosphere magical in its 
clearness and exhilaration, roused her imagination and 
set her pulses beating with expectation. 

But in Khartoum the hand of civilization was evi- 
dent in the symmetrical and well-planned streets, 
broad and neat; in the English houses around which 
assiduous hosing had made green gardens spring up 
in plenty; in the military bands which set some hours 
to music every day. The life was English; the polo, 
the tennis, the garden parties, the calling, the gossip. 
As in most English communities in tropical countries, 
it was considered slightly bad form to display too 
much interest, outwardly at least, in the native. The 
camels, the sakiyeh which creaked and groaned its 
eternal song just outside her gate on the bank of the 
Blue Nile, the naked children, the devout figures that 
knelt to pray to the God of Islam at the street corners 
at the hours of devotion, the high cry from the 
mosque, these seemed living anachronisms, out of 
place and time. 

It was only just now that she was beginning to 
perceive that under this superficial Anglicization the 
heart of a great continent beat as steadily as in the 
squalidest desert village. It was only recently that 
she had found out that almost all the Englishmen she 
met, in spite of their tennis, and duck-shooting and 
banter, had the love of their work in their very veins, 
and that each was as keen on this larger game of civ- 
ilizing a continent as a school-boy playing centre for- 
ward in a football match. As a matter of fact, there 
was no room in a place where each man had an im- 


1 9 o THE LURE 

portant task for the slacker, the incompetent, or the 
fool. 

The women were kind-hearted, pleasant, intelligent ; 
not averse to gossip, but not given to scandal as in 
Cairo. Most of them were good tennis players, good 
horsewomen, and excellent hostesses. There was a 
spirit of comradeship among them which was very 
wholesome. Anne found herself kindly received, and 
formed several friendships. Most of her husband’s 
friends, however, were bachelors, and they could not 
do enough for her. They were willing to serve her 
in anything, from lending their favorite ponies to 
teaching her Arabic in order that she might cope with 
her native servants. 

She was riding along to lunch with a Mr. and Mrs. 
Summers in answer to a note received from the hand 
of their little black waled that morning, a negro of 
about ten years with lips of superb African thickness 
and the air of an eighteenth century Pompey in his 
vast white turban and emerald green sash. 

Summers was in the Irrigation Department, an 
amiable, blue-eyed person of some six feet two, who 
had taken his Blue at Oxford. Mrs. Summers was a 
little woman with sharp, bright brown eyes, a quick 
way of speaking and a bird-like method of moving. 
She was known, disrespectfully, as the Boot Button. 

“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said, when Anne’s 
donkey had been secured in the shade of the wall. 
“Billy has sent round to say that he’s bringing three 
people to lunch, and he’s written with his usual indis- 
tinctness, so that I can’t read the name. It looks like 
Galt.” 

“Are there any Gaits in Khartoum?” 

“No. They’re probably visitors. Anyway, I don’t 
know them, and it’s sweet of you to come at such 
short notice to help me entertain them. I’ve such a 


THE LURE 


191 

bother with my cook, too. He married a Shilluk 
woman — he said she was a most expensive wife, and 
that he paid five pounds for her — but she refuses to 
cook for her mother-in-law; and yesterday, if you 
please, he disappeared for the day to give her a beat- 
ing and settle up the domestic differences. They live 
at Omdurman. I didn’t know where he’d gone, and I 
got in a substitute, who now refuses to turn out at a 
moment’s notice, and of course he is right, though 
Ahmed really can cook, and this man served anchovy 
sauce with mutton last night. The old cook, Ahmed, 
is sitting outside, sulking, and I’m afraid there’ll be 
a fight and that we shall never get lunch served prop- 
erly.” 

She related the circumstances as a European mis- 
tress tells the tale of a broken dish. 

“I wonder if your husband will come?” she went 
on to Anne, as they sat in the darkened drawing- 
room with its cool white walls and comfortable chairs. 
“I sent a note round to the War Office as I wrote to 
you.” 

“I’m sure he can’t,” said Anne. “He told me he 
should be over in Khartoum North all the morning, 
and would lunch with Mr. French.” 

“Mr. French messes with Captain Hartley and Mr. 
Fisher, doesn’t he? I believe they asked us to a pic- 
nic on Tuti Island a little while ago, but we couldn’t 
go.” 

It was a quarter to one. At half-past Mr. 
Summers drove up to the gate in his high dog- 
cart. 

“There are only two of them, after all,” said Mrs. 
Summers, stepping back from the verandah to speak 
sotto voice to Anne. “A woman and a boy of about 
twenty-something. I’ll go out and meet them. My 
dear, she’s dressed in khaki!” 


192 


THE LURE 


The moment after Anne heard sounds of introduc- 
tion and welcome outside. A thin voice said, “My 
husband is so sorry, Mrs. Summers, but he has had 
to go to lunch at the Palace and discuss business there, 
or he would have come with us.” The intonation 
was oddly familiar. Where had she listened to just 
that same apologetic, minor voice before? 

Mrs. Summers brought her two guests into the 
drawing-room. The woman was dressed in khaki of 
a peculiarly ugly tourist cut, as Mrs. Summers had 
indicated, and was a contrast to her hostess in her 
cool muslin dress. Anne started when she saw the 
face. Where had she seen those querulous, haggard, 
handsome features, with their anxious expression be- 
fore, or the vacant-looking, fair-moustached young 
man who followed close behind? 

For an instant she racked her brains, and then the 
remembrance came, and with it a sudden rush of crim- 
son to her face. 

“Mrs. Host — Mrs. Galt,” began Mrs. Summers, 
slurring the last name a little in her uncertainty. 

“Mrs. Goss and I have met before,” said Anne, 
rousing herself quickly. “I don’t suppose you re- 
member me, though, Mrs. Goss. I met you one day 
in the offices of the Orb ” 

“I’m afraid I don’t,” replied Mrs. Goss, turning 
her faded and once splendid eyes on Anne’s face with 
the look of fox-like curiosity that Anne remembered 
seeing in them three years ago when she had been 
introduced to her for the first time. “Did you meet 
my son?” She manoeuvred the tall limp youth for- 
ward. 

“Jewdo?” said he, with a vague look over Anne’s 
head into space. 

For an instant, as they rested on him, his mother’s 
eyes, usually so peevish and dull, flashed into intense 


THE LURE 


i93 


expression. It was as if her whole soul went out to 
support his faltering intellect and spur it into effort. 

Anne caught the look, and wondered. Why had 
she dragged this unfortunate creature up to Khartoum 
with her? 

The three women began to speak of the usual top- 
ics ; the discomfort of the only hotel, the intense heat, 
the dustiness of the journey from Wady Haifa. 

Anne’s brain kept up an under-current of thought. 
What had Huntly Goss to do in Khartoum? Why 
had he brought his wife with this miserable appen- 
dage? Should she be forced to meet him in this 
small community, or were they only birds of passage? 
Her heart had stopped for an instant at the name of 
Goss. The wound had healed: she had forgotten, as 
her husband had prophesied she would; but even a 
closed wound can throb painfully. The remembrance 
of that time of torture was still too recent. This 
woman’s husband was the only man at whose feet 
she had laid all the romance of her youth, all the first 
golden treasure of her heart. That, she thought, she 
could never re-give. All her affection, all her loyalty, 
belonged to Peter; but no glamor of the unattainable 
had ever rested upon him, she had never felt for him 
that madness which is half-sweetness and half-torture, 
that passion and devotion which she had given to 
Goss. 

Mrs. Goss’s fragmentary and jerky conversation 
enlightened her a little. Mrs. Goss had an awkward 
and suspicious way of talking that was rather char- 
acteristic of her whole personality. 

“1 don’t know when my husband means to start. 
He never does anything at the time he says he is 
going to do it. ... I think we are to have one of 
the Government steamers. ... Of course, there is 
a good deal to be done before we leave here, I sup- 


194 


THE LURE 


pose. . . . No, I don’t like the idea. I dislike heat, 
and I can’t bear the natives, and I’ve been eaten alive 
with mosquitoes in Cairo. . . . What, no mosquitoes 
here? Really? But there are lots further down the 
river, they say.” 

Anne, keeping one ear on these and other phrases, 
tried to talk to the fair-haired young man. 

“Did you come up by train to Assouan?” 

“Aa-ah. We were in the train.” 

He spoke with indistinctness, as if his tongue were 
too big for his mouth. 

“Miles, and miles, and miles,” he ended, with a 
sudden burst of intelligibility. 

“Didn’t you break the journey at Luxor?” 

He stared at her. 

“It is a very long journey,” said Anne. 

“Miles, and miles, and miles, and miles,” he reiter- 
ated like a child. 

“And you went in the boat, too,” she went on, 
adapting herself to him. 

“In the boat. Miles, and miles, and miles.” 

“You are all staying in the Nile Hotel, I suppose,” 
she continued, mechanically, feeling almost indignant 
that Mrs. Goss should have dragged this poor crea- 
ture out into the light of day with her. 

His watery eyes helplessly sought his mother’s. Im- 
mediately her voice flagged in the midst of what she 
was saying, and another strange look conveyed to the 
idiot some mental strength that was not his own. 

“Yes, we are staying at the Nile Hotel,” he replied, 
with what was almost distinctness. 

Mrs. Goss wheeled round on them, as if to stop the 
colloquy. 

“You live here?” she asked abruptly. 

“For the winter months,” replied Anne. “In April 
or May I am to go back. Very few women stay here 


THE LURE 


195 

in the hot weather; we desert our husbands and go 
into the cool again.” 

“You leave your husbands alone,” repeated Mrs. 
Goss, in a somewhat odd tone of inquiry. Then she 
added: “I do seem to remember your face.” 

“My name was Moorhouse then,” said Anne. “I 
had not married.” 

Mrs. Goss struggled to remember 

“You were writing ?” 

“Yes, for the Orb.” 

“You knew it went bankrupt?” 

“Yes, about a fortnight after I left it. It must 
have been very disappointing to Mr. Goss; he put so 
much energy into the organization of the paper.” 

“He always puts energy into what he wants to do,” 
said Mrs. Goss, with a slow smile. 

“Then he must always succeed,” said Mrs. Sum- 
mers. “Oh, here’s Billy — where have you been, Billy? 
We’re all dying for lunch.” 

“You wouldn’t have got any if I hadn’t gone out 
and threatened to lay into some one with a stick,” 
said Billy Summers, with a grin on his good-looking 
face. “There was a bit of scrap in the kitchen.” 

“Oh, that dreadful Ahmed!” 

“It’s all settled most amicably now. They are 
swearing brotherhood, I believe, and the soup is 
served, isn’t it, Yussef?” 

“Hader,” said the white-garmented youth who had 
come in to announce lunch, without an atom of expres- 
sion on his dark countenance. 


CHAPTER II 


W HAT was the name of that man who used to 
run the Orb” asked Captain Host at dinner. 
“Huntly Goss,” replied Anne. “He is up 
here. His wife sat beside me at lunch at the Sum- 
mers’ to-day.” 

“I thought it was that name. Your aunt used to 
complain that she lost a lot of money through the 
Orb going bankrupt, and say that she would never 
have been inveigled into it except by the fascinations 
of this Mr. Goss.” 

“Aunt Helen hadn’t a halfpenny in it,” Anne said 
with a smile. “She wrote one article for it at an ab- 
surd price, which I re-wrote and was to go halves in 
the profits. That was never paid. And then she was 
supposed to edit a page on dogs — but she never saw 
the page so far as I know, though they put ‘Edited 
by Lady Helen Moorhouse’ at the top.” 

“Oh, then, they’re the people Mrs. Summers wrote 
about. I saw Goss at the Palace this afternoon. What 
are the wife and son like?” 

“The wife is an interesting woman in her way,” 
said Anne, “but not altogether a pleasant way. The 
son is not quite right in the head. He’s the son of a 
former marriage. She was a Mrs. Wicksteed when 
Mr. Goss married her.” 

“What on earth have they brought him out here 
for?” 

“I can’t guess,” said Anne, “except that his mother 
may not wish to be parted from him. There is an 
196 


THE LURE 


197 


extraordinary devotion between them. I didn’t make 
out exactly what they were here for, but it isn’t just 
touring.” 

“No. Haven’t you heard of this big crocodile 
farming scheme? The company has been formed in 
England, and they’ve already started preliminary 
work up the Bahr-el-Ghazal. This man Goss has 
come up here with everything in the way of big drum 
to fix on a permanent site for the first farm. I believe 
Government are giving them the ground on condition 
that they receive a percentage of the profits instead 
of export duty on the skins. They have been holding 
a committee meeting at the Palace to-day about it. 
Of course, the Government is keen on anything likely 
to increase the trade of the Sudan; but there are a 
good many technical and local difficulties to be over- 
come. Anyway, Huntly Goss is to go up in a Govern- 
ment steamer to pick his site with the aid of Govern- 
ment advice, and report to the company on what the 
pioneer party have done.” 

“I thought that the crocodiles were vermin, and that 
any one could shoot them without a license.” 

“So they can, dear.” 

Her husband’s blue eyes looked thoughtful. 

“He’s a very plausible-sounding person,” said he, 
“but I can’t say I exactly take to him. There’s some- 
thing quite indefinable which suggests the hairy heel 
about him. Yet Lady Minehead was charmed with 
him.” 

“He is of partly Irish blood,” said Anne, the color 
flooding her throat and cheeks in spite of herself. 
“He is an exceptionally able man, at least they always 
used to say so in London.” 

“He’s able enough, I haven’t the least doubt. Yet 
the Orb went bankrupt.” 

“It was because his ideas were too big,” said Anne, 


198 THE LURE 

with warmth. “The shareholders wouldn’t back him 
sufficiently.” 

“Then you are a believer in him?” 

“Yes,” said Anne loyally. “I am. He has Celtic 
imagination and English practicality, and that is a 
good combination.” 

She was surprised herself at the detached way in 
which she spoke of him. 

“I dare say I misjudge him,” said Captain Host, 
with one of his frank laughs. “But if you hadn’t 
championed him, I should not feel inclined to place 
unmitigated confidence in him.” He threw a piece 
of biscuit to the little pariah dog they had adopted, a 
humble and affectionate pensioner of the name of 
Waggles. “He has a good voice, and so on, if there’s 
a dash of the successful actor about him. He appeared 
to me to have that suppleness of manner which one 
associates with the Greek.” 

Waggles beat his tail on the floor with a meek and 
hopeful sense of favors to come. 

“Good old man!” said Captain Host, holding out 
his hand. Waggles thrust a damp and flattered nose 
into it. “Go and beg from your missus. She’s got 
a soft heart and the sugar basin is on the coffee tray 
by her elbow.” 

Waggles took the hint. 

Anne laughed, and picked out a* lump. 

“Peter, I do believe you have the Englishman’s 
suspicion of everything which is not very English. 
I know Mr. Goss is un-English. But I’ve known him 
to be generous and chivalrous and disinterested. One 
doesn’t work in an office with a man without knowing 
something of his character.” 

Peter smiled. “I shouldn’t call you a good judge 
of character, Anne. You only see the best in every 
one, and then imagine they’re perfect. It’s a principle 


THE LURE 


199 

which you began to apply to Sudanese servants the 
other day, with disastrous effects. But I wouldn’t 
have you different, or you might begin to pick serious 
holes in me.” 

Anne felt herself drawn to return to a topic which 
both alarmed and fascinated her. 

‘‘When does Mr. Goss go ?” she asked, making her 
voice casual. “Is his wife going with him?” 

“Next week. It’s the very trip you’ve always 
wanted to make, isn’t it.” 

“Yes,” said Anne mechanically. 

“Well, perhaps it can be managed! This Mrs. Goss 
going will make things possible for you.” 

He waited for her enthusiastic exclamation. 

“What — do you mean,” said Anne, with a sudden 
dismayed beating of the heart. 

“That I could arrange for you to go too. You 
know them and like them, so It would be a good 
opportunity.” 

He was obviously disappointed at her lack of ap- 
preciation of a plan which he had evidently thought 
out as a pleasant surprise, that Anne forced an enthu- 
siastic note into her voice. 

“I should love to go,” she said. She seized on the 
first excuse to hand. “But I shouldn’t think of leav- 
ing you. We can make the trip together some day, 
and that will be heavenly.” 

“But that is just it. The Government are prob- 
ably sending me along with them. The Sirdar spoke 
to me about it to-day, and suggested my taking you. 
It’s rather an opportunity for you, old lady! You 
don’t go up the Bahr-el-Ghazal in the ordinary Gov- 
ernment or tourist steamers, and you’ll see the very 
wild Africa that your heart longs for. I’m not abso- 
lutely sure it will come off, but I’ve every hope it 
may. And if I am sent, I couldn’t very well leave 


200 


THE LURE 


you here alone with the native servants, so you need 
not feel you’re deserting anything or anybody.” 

Anne felt tongue-tied. She tried to show enthu- 
siasm. 

After all, it might not come off, as he had said, and 
she must think of some excuse for not going. She 
could not possibly go. For a moment she considered 
the advisability of telling her husband the whole story, 
but this she dismissed quickly. The thing was finished 
with, what need to trouble his peace by shaping into a 
figure of flesh and blood what had only been a shad- 
owy phantom hitherto? 

Besides, his lack of appreciation, his criticism of 
Goss made her sensitive. How could she tell him that 
she had given her girlhood’s devotion to a man in 
whom he professed to detect the “hairy heel.” Her 
pride forbade it. 

It was not that she felt in danger of being disloyal 
to Peter. Dear old Peter! But the situation would 
be so false, so impregnated with deception, that her 
soul revolted against it. Goss himself must be far 
from wishing it. 

The day afterward Captain Host came home in 
the best of spirits on his way to tennis. 

“News for you! We are to go, Anne, we are to 
go !” he cried like a school-boy, kissing her. 

“Where?” 

“On the crocodile expedition . . . it’s really worked 
rippingly! There will be practically no expense ex- 
cept our wine and mess bill, so we shall do the whole 
thing on the cheap and have a splendid time into the 
bargain. I shall be able to show you the country I 
was in for such a long time, old girl — the country 
you’ve always dreamed about — savages, and hippos and 
elephants and lions and the whole caboodle. Khar- 
toum almost stifles me after that. ... We shall have 


THE LURE 


201 


to think about kit — I’ll order you some mosquito boots 
at Capato’s and run through the medicine chest. You 
must take a lot of veils — those veils you wear for 
motoring: we shall be in mosquito country. And a 
large assortment of underclothes — I don’t suppose 
we’ll get much washing done on board. . . . You’d 
better ask Mrs. Hellier about it ; she went up the White 
Nile with her husband last winter, and she’ll know 
pretty well everything that a woman needs in the way 
of kit. . . 

She had never seen Peter in wilder spirits, not even 
on their wedding day. Then there had been an under- 
current of apologetic solicitude beneath all his glad- 
ness, something indefinable which conveyed to her that 
he realized that he was asking more from her than he 
thought himself worthy to receive. It had touched 
her deeply, and made her heart go out to him in a 
new tenderness. 

“When are we to go?” she asked, meeting his 
eager blue eyes with a smile she tried to make nat- 
ural. 

“Monday, at midday.” 

“And to-day’s Thursday.” 

“Heaps of time to get ready. I must have a look 
at my gun-case. There’s that new .405 Winchester, 
and the Springfield, I shall take them both. You’d 
better take a rifle, too, Anne, you’ve done a bit of 
shooting. I’ll see about your license to-morrow. Not 
big game, but duck and so on. We shall have to 
leave Waggles behind. Poor old Waggles! Poor old 
boy!” 

Waggles, who was effacing himself against the 
floor in an ecstasy of adoration, thumped his tail en- 
thusiastically. 

“Aren’t you pleased about it, Anne ?” he asked, with 
sudden blankness. 


202 


THE LURE 


She put out her hand to him, and he bent over her 
seated figure and put his cheek against hers. 

“Of course I’m pleased,” she said quickly. “I was 
thinking.” 

“You want to go?” 

“You know I’ve always wanted to go on the trip, 
dear,” she answered. “Even I never hoped for such 
luck on the Bahr-el-Ghazal.” 

“That’s all right, then,” he said cheerfully. “I 
thought you didn’t seem as keen as I expected. ... I 
say, Anne, have you called on Mrs. Goss yet ?” 

“No.” 

“Well, I think we should ask ’em here to dinner 
or something. You know them, and we’re going up 
together — it will seem odd if we don’t. How about 
Saturday?” 

“Lunch, the Helliers; dinner, the Beechams.” 

“We know the Beechams well enough to get out 
of the dinner. You’d better write now, Anne — to 
Mrs. Goss. I’m seeing Beecham at tennis, I’ll settle 
them. Does the son go about with them?” 

“Apparently,” said Anne. 

“Well, make it for all three. We’ll have the Sum- 
mers here to meet them, that’ll make us seven alto- 
gether. Better get that American woman who’s stay- 
ing at the Grand, too, that’ll even it up.” He glanced 
at his watch. “I shall be late for tennis.” 

“Where are you playing?” 

“At the club. If you’re round that way at five, you 
might meet me there with the sais and the ponies, 
and we’ll have a ride out somewhere. It’s cool enough 
to-day to be possible.” 

Anne assented, and her husband went off, swinging 
his racket. 

There were times when she felt herself far older 
than Peter, in spite of his nine years advantage. To- 


THE LURE 


203 


day was one of them. And she hated herself for acting 
a part to him. The pleasure of being with Peter was 
that his essential honesty called out perfect frankness 
in herself. His soul was as limpid as a child’s. She 
could look through his blue eyes into his clean soul. 
And now she was having to dissemble. It made this 
contemplated trip all the more impossible. 

She got up and moved restlessly about the room, 
which was sheltered from the sun by a wide and 
roofed-in balcony. It was pleasant and cool, for 
which reason Peter had apportioned it to her for a 
sitting-room. But at the present moment it felt sti- 
fling. 

How could she ask the Gosses to dinner? How 
could she face the prospect of playing at polite friend- 
ship with a man who had left an indelible mark on her 
whole life ? Why had he reappeared at this juncture, 
to spoil her tranquil happiness? 

Waggles regarded her impatient progress up and 
down the room with grave and doggy surprise. He 
had jumped down to follow her, but finding that she 
was not going down-stairs, he settled himself again 
into the chair dedicated to his use. , 

Suddenly Anne paused. There was only one per- 
son who could stop her from going besides her hus- 
band. That person was Goss himself. Why not ap- 
peal to him? He must see the impossibility of the 
scheme. How and when could she see him? 

The answer was obvious. If they could come to 
dinner on Saturday, she must find an opportunity to 
speak to him then, somehow, somewhere. 

But supposing they could not come? Well, in that 
case, she must write a note asking him to call in — she 
could give some trivial pretext connected with the 
trip. He would surely read between the lines. There 
would always be time for this Bahr-el-Ghazal trip to 


204 


THE LURE 


be modified in some way which would exclude herself 
from the party. A decision formed so hastily could 
be revoked with equal speed. 

She sat down and wrote to Mrs. Goss. 

“My husband tells me we are to accompany you on 
your trip to the Bahr-el-Ghazal. I am so delighted. 
We hope that you can all dine with us on Saturday: 
your husband will have a good deal to discuss with 
mine about the expedition, and you and I can con- 
sult as to clothes and so on. 

“Yours sincerely, 

“Anne Host.” 

Summoning a servant, she dispatched the note forth- 
with to the hotel. “May Heaven forgive me for un- 
truths,” she thought, watching from her seat in the 
balcony as the bearer of her message set off in the 
burning sunshine of the afternoon. 

He returned within the hour. The sitt had been 
out, but he had left the note in the hotel. Anne knew 
the somewhat casual habits of the hotel staff. She 
went to the telephone and rang up the Nile Hotel. 

“Is that the Nile? I want to speak to the porter. 

. . . I sent my servant round with a note for Mrs. 
Goss just now, and I’m particularly anxious she should 
get it directly she comes in. . . . Oh, she’s in now? 
Please ask her to speak to me on the telephone. . . .” 

A pause. 

Then a woman’s voice. “Yes?” 

“Is that you, Mrs. Goss? It’s Mrs. Host speak- 
ing. Have you had my note? No? Well ” she 

repeated the invitation she had written. 

“I don’t think we have any engagement,” said Mrs. 
Goss’s hard voice. “But I’d better ask my husband 
and ring you up later.” 


THE LURE 


205 

They exchanged a few politenesses, and then Anne 
hung up the receiver. 

It was half-past three. If Mrs. Goss did not ring 
up before a quarter to five, Anne would be on her 
way to the club. Of course a note would be sent, but 
she felt in an agony of impatience to know something 
settled before she met Peter. 

She ordered the ponies for twenty to five, and 
busied herself with some teacloths she was embroid- 
ering. 

At a quarter past four no one had rung, and she 
went up-stairs to change into her habit and get on her 
sun-helmet preparatory to going out. 

At half past four the stiff vagi came up and an- 
nounced that the telephone was ringing. The Arab 
servants had a wholesome fear of the telephone. 

“Taieb” (Good), she replied. “I will come. ,, 

She hurried to the telephone. “Yes?” 

“Who is it?” asked a man’s voice. 

“Mrs. Host.” 

“It’s Huntly Goss speaking.” 

The receiver trembled in Anne’s hand. 

“My wife and step-son will be delighted to come 
on Saturday, but I’m afraid I mayn’t be able to get off, 
so I must postpone the pleasure of meeting you till 
we meet on Monday. I hope Captain Host is well.” 

“Yes, thank you. . . . I’m sorry you can’t come,” 
she said. “Please wait a moment. . . .” She put 
down the receiver and thought a moment desperately. 
Could she ask him now whether he would come in 
and see her? ... He might misunderstand. . . . 
Why not say all she had to say over the telephone, 
now, at once? Not a soul was in the house who could 
understand English. 

“Mr. Goss — are you there?” she said, her fingers 

r 1 i • 1 rr.s f eady on the receiver. 


20 6 


THE LURE 


“Yes. . . .?” 

“Is there any one near you at the telephone ?” 

“No,” he replied, in a somewhat puzzled voice. 

“I should like to say something to you. It is a little 

difficult ” She hesitated. It was clear from his 

tone that he had not the faintest suspicion of her 
identity. 

“If I can assist you ” he began, in the grandiose 

manner that reminded her so much of the Orb days. 

“Wait,” she said, catching her voice. “I don’t think 
you can have the least knowledge of who I am?” 

“Why, it’s Mrs. Host, isn’t it?” 

“Yes — but please listen. I am Anne Moorhouse, 
that is I was, before I married.” 

There was a slight pause. Was he deliberating? 
Was he moved? Was he searching his memory? 
What kept him silent? 

Then he said, doubtfully and in a lower key, “Not 
Lady Helen’s niece?” 

“Yes,” said Anne. 

“What an extraordinary piece of luck !” said Goss’s 
voice. “I had no idea — I mean I never heard of 
your marriage.” 

She felt certain that the news meant less to him 
than to her. But it was not to revive sentimental 
remembrances in Goss that she was at the telephone. 

“Of course not. I want to ask you a favor ” 

she said in hurried and low tones. “I think it would 
be easier for both of us — I mean comfortable — if we 
didn’t meet — at any rate at close quarters.” 

“But I don’t see why ” said his voice. “On 

the contrary, as far as I am concerned.” 

“Oh, you can’t mean that. ... I know we’ve both 
of us forgotten — a foolish episode; but you must see 
that under the circumstances it’s impossible for us to 
go on this trip together — from any point of view.” 


THE LURE 


207 


“You informed your husband?” 

“No — that is just it. I never told him.” 

“You were perfectly right — there was nothing to 
tell. You must forgive me for saying so, but don’t 
you think that you take rather an exaggerated view 
of the case? The whole affair was pretty innocuous 
. . . and the market's safe enough now ” A slight 
break and change in his voice told her that the last 
sentence was prompted by the advent of a third per- 
son. 

“Am I right in supposing that some one is within 
hearing and that your conversation has to be care- 
ful?” She knew the exact position of the telephone 
apparatus in the hotel. It was not protected by a 
cabin. 

“Yes. No harm done so far.” 

“Then I’ll speak in such a way that you need only 
answer Yes and No.” 

“Good.” 

“Please don’t think I attach the slightest import- 
ance to the past, or that it could influence the present 
in any way. But my husband knows there was some 
one. I have never told him details. But there would 
be a deception about the situation that would spoil 
things for me. I want you to arrange so that there 
is no room for a second woman.” 

“I must say I fail to see the necessity. In fact, it 
would be extremely difficult.” 

“Then you refuse?” 

“I refuse to deprive myself of what will enliven 
a period which would otherwise be sufficiently dull.” 

He spoke carefully, she understood with the pur- 
pose of saying nothing that could lead a listener to 
suppose that there was anything personal about the 
conversation. 

“But at my request?” 


208 THE LURE 

“If I saw any necessity I would comply. But I am 
a selfish person.” 

“I do not wish to go.” 

“Tell the — other side that.” 

“You mean my husband?” 

“Yes.” 

“You will do nothing?” 

“Absolutely nothing. I am adamant.” 

She hung up the receiver. She was furious, and 
yet not entirely with him. It was foolish to have 
thrown herself on his mercy. She could almost see 
him smiling at the other end, and saying to himself, 
“My dear girl — you disturb yourself unduly.” 

Was she disturbing herself unduly? She could 
not tell Peter she did not wish to go, for she could 
give no adequate reason. 

Very well, then; she would go. Every one pays a 
price for past folly — this would be hers. 

Yet she made the decision with an odd sinking of 
the heart. Was it a foreboding? 


CHAPTER III 


T HE boat appointed for the use of the expedi- 
tion, the Harriet, was one of the smallest 
steamboats in the Government service. She lay 
against the steep bank of the Blue Nile, below the 
Embankment Avenue with its double rows of acacias 
and gum-trees. The Embankment Avenue runs the 
length of Khartoum, from the Governor-Generars 
Palace to the old Zoological Gardens, now empty ex- 
cept for a lonely panther and a few monkeys, though 
its carefully tended trees make it a tropical Eden. 

Anne had just gone on board. To get on the Har- 
riet she had to pass, by means of a plank gangway, 
over the nuggur or flat native boat alongside, between 
the steamer and the shore. It was the Harriet's des- 
tined travelling companion, and Mrs. Host had to pick 
her way through packing cases, huddled sheep, coal, 
native cooking apparatus, and bundles of matting. In 
the pit of the nuggur a comely young Sudani woman 
bent over her midday cooking. She was bare from 
the waist upwards and the black hair about her black 
face was braided into a multitude of rat’s-tail plaits, 
which gave her the appearance of an archaic Egyptian 
statue. White-clad bahari also squatted about the 
boat eyeing the savory mess she was concocting with 
contemplative eyes. Its blue and onion-scented smoke 
rose to the covered-in centre deck of the Harriet. 
“Good morning, Mrs. Host.” 

Mrs. Goss got up from a lounge-chair to greet 
Anne, not with too great a cordiality. 

209 


2io THE LURE 

“Hasn’t my husband come on board yet?” asked 
Anne. 

“Not yet. Neither has Huntly. But Huntly is 
always late. Austin, come and shake hands with Mrs. 
Host.” 

The fair youth shambled forward obediently. If 
it had been intelligent his face would have been good- 
looking. It was its vacancy which made it unpleas- 
ant. 

“Have you seen your cabin?” asked Mrs. Goss. 

“No; I sent my luggage this morning, but I haven’t 
been on the boat till now.” 

“Huntly has given you a cool cabin,” said Mrs. 
Goss. “At least as cool as any of them. We shall 
stifle in them. It’s at the end. He said I was to 
show you.” 

Anne followed her to the prow of the boat. The 
cabin apportioned for the use of herself and Peter 
was certainly large and airy. Mrs. Goss, with no 
great enthusiasm, showed her how the shutters of 
the window acted, one of glass, one of mosquito- 
netting, and one to exclude light. 

“I hope your husband hasn’t given us the best cabin 
on the boat,” said Anne quickly. 

“Oh no. I have the single cabin along here, Austin 
is next me, and Huntly has the double one at the other 
end — almost as big as yours — to himself. He will 
use it to work in as well. There’s a mosquito house 
on the top deck; if the mosquitoes are very bad, 
he will put a couple of beds for you and me in 
there.” 

“That is very good of him,” said Anne. “I sup- 
pose we shall be starting soon.” She took off her hat 
and, having got some embroidery out of her dressing 
bag, prepared to go on the shaded deck again. 

“Huntly said so.” 


THE LURE 21 1 

Mrs. Goss did not sound as if she were very con- 
vinced. 

Anne smoothed her hair at the small mirror, while 
Mrs. Goss looked on, always with the same look of 
restless curiosity. She still wore her khaki coat and 
skirt, while Anne was in a white muslin. Anne felt 
a certain hostility, passive and instinctive, in the elder 
woman’s large and sunken eyes. 

The two women made their way back to the deck 
and sat down in two of the deep chairs. A breeze 
blew pleasantly up stream, and the fierce midday sun 
on the bank made the shade of the deck grateful. 
Anne’s fingers were soon busy upon the tea-cloth she 
was embroidering. Mrs. Goss looked at it, in her 
discontented way. 

“I wish I could embroider.” 

“It’s very easy,” said Anne. 

“I’ve never done any. I was on the stage as a 
young girl. My first husband was in the profession. 
I never had time for that sort of thing.” 

“I learnt when I was a little girl,” said Anne. “I 
don’t think one ever forgets.” 

“Do you write now?” asked Mrs. Goss, in her odd, 
jerky way. 

“Sometimes, for magazines. But it is not often 
that I’ve had an idea for one lately. I’ve had such a 
lot to do since I’ve been up here. And contentedness 
makes one’s brain lazy.” 

“Are you content?” asked Mrs. Goss, in a tone of 
wonder. 

“Yes — as content as any human being could be,” 
said Anne with a smile. “Why not?” 

The hollow eyes were fixed on hers in a kind of 
wistfulness. Then Mrs. Goss said abruptly — 

“Huntly wondered who you were when I told him 
you knew him.” 


212 


THE LURE 


“Oh, I suppose he did not hear of my marriage. 
Ours were business relations,” said Anne, keeping her 
face bent over her work. To her anger she felt the 
blood welling into her cheeks. 

There was a silence broken only by the incessant 
groaning of the sakiyeh * on the bank above, and the 
chatter of the natives in the nuggur below. 

Austin, the idiot, was playing some intricate game 
of his own with a piece of string. His mother glanced 
at him from time to time, with the look of ardent 
protectiveness that Anne had noticed before. 

Mrs. Goss caught her in the act of observance. 

“Austin,” she said. 

The boy’s wandering eyes came slowly to hers. 

“Go and see what the temperature is. The ther- 
mometer is over there.” 

Austin regarded her fixedly, and then went with- 
out hesitation to the spot indicated and returned again. 

“It says eighty-two,” he reported, in a depressed 
voice. 

He sat down again, and the vacant expression re- 
turned to his face. 

Anne was astonished. He was not altogether idiot, 
then. She had not credited him with sufficient intelli- 
gence to read a thermometer. 

A slight look of triumph was in his mother’s eyes, 
though her casual comment was, “Eighty-two in the 
shade !” 

“That’s cool winter weather for Khartoum,” said 
Anne. “Last week it was over one hundred in the 
shade. But one doesn’t feel it much — the air is so 
dry and exhilarating.” 

She found herself wishing that the two men would 
come aboard so that they could start. This small talk 


* Native irrigation wheel propelled by oxen. 


THE LURE 


213 


with a woman she did not like, and the waiting was 
most wearisome. It was long past the hour at which 
Peter had told her they were to start. 

“Huntly is always late,” the depressing voice beside 
her remarked at intervals. 

“Well, Peter never is,” Anne replied, with some 
tartness. 

“Pm hungry,” announced Austin, suddenly, sur- 
veying a table already laid for a meal at a little dis- 
tance along the deck. 

“It’s more than lunch-time, we will not wait for 
them much longer,” said Mrs. Goss, walking to the 
side and lifting her hand to shade her eyes from the 
blinding light and look along the Embankment Ave- 
nue. 

“Huntly is coming,” she announced. “I see him 
now. He’s alone.” 

“What can have happened to my husband?” asked 
Anne, coming to look too. She felt an extraordinary 
and irrational nervousness. Goss was swinging down 
the embankment with that confident gait she knew 
so well. She would have given worlds to have had 
Peter beside her at the moment when she was to meet 
Goss again. All her mental prophecies that she would 
feel no emotion whatsoever at the encounter were 
falsified. She experienced a feeling of suffocation 
which was physical as much as psychical. She knew 
that his personality had remained with her during 
these three years. His name in the newspapers or on 
the lips of a chance speaker, a face like his in the 
street, a similar mannerism in an acquaintance or a 
stranger, had always raised the ghost and recalled the 
uneasy spell which he had exercised over her. And 
now, though God knew she was not in love with him 
— how could she be when there was Peter? — his ap- 
proach was making her pulses beat irregularly. 


214 


THE LURE 


Goss came nearer. In dress — he wore some kind 
of tropical suiting, the usual Khartoum pith helmet 
on his head — he was as careful as ever. Yet, as he 
boarded the nuggur, glanced up and raised his hat 
to them with a “I hope you haven’t kept lunch wait- 
ing,” she saw that there was a slight difference in his 
appearance. The spot on his handsome head that had 
been thin before, was slightly bald now. His jowl, 
with the clearly cut mouth above it, was a little heav- 
ier, as was his figure; the lips a little looser. Apollo 
had put on weight. In the next instant he was greet- 
ing her. 

“I’ve a note from your husband for you in my 
pocket, Mrs. Host,” said he, producing it. “He can’t 
get off to-day, after all: Sir Algernon has some 
business to transact with him first; but he’ll catch 
us up by train to Goz-abu-Goma and join us at 
Kosti with the Monday’s mail, which hasn’t got in 
yet.” 

“When will that be?” asked Anne. 

“On the 1 2th — three days from now. I hope you’re 
not disappointed, Mrs. Host. You will be a grass 
widow for a very short time. ... We must get off 
now as soon as possible, and you’d better start on 
with lunch. Ibrahim! — where is that confounded 
Ibraham ? I told him to get on with lunch as soon as 
Mrs. Host came on board.” 

Within a quarter of an hour the boat, with its 
crowded satellite, was moving up-stream, and lunch 
was in progress. They steamed past the point where 
the White Nile meets the Blue, its opaquer waters 
making a clearly-defined division in the broad stream 
of the united river before they mixed on their way 
to Cairo and the sea. Soon they had left behind 
them the solitary tree, known as Gordon’s tree, stand- 
ing out on a point in the sunbaked fields which Anne 


THE LURE 


215 


and Peter had made their goal on many a morning’s 
ride. She was slipping out into the unknown already. 

Anne found herself talking away easily — the kind of 
surface talk that made no demands upon her. She was 
no longer the raw girl, whose feelings were mirrored 
in her eyes. Though her heart sank when she heard 
that Peter was deserting her for three days, common- 
sense came to her rescue and prevented her from show- 
ing her disappointment. Perhaps, she thought finally — 
perhaps it might even be better. She would have time 
to get used to things, to adjust herself to learn to get 
over her childish nervousness at meeting this man 
before Peter saw them together. With this idea, she 
deliberately set herself at lunch — while they con- 
versed on such general topics as Khartoum, Cairo 
races, and the proposed visit of the King of Spain 
to the Lado — to criticize him. The three years had 
left unmistakable, though almost indefinable, marks 
upon him. He was not so debonair and elastic as 
formerly, there was the slight touch of degeneration 
about the man’s face and figure which is usually the 
result of ill-success. Yet he was in his accustomed 
role of conquering hero up here in the Sudan ; he had 
come, as her husband had remarked, with all manner 
of big drum. And in his conversation he was the old 
Goss, full of shameless paradox, caustic generalities, 
brilliant nothings. He was careful to include his wife 
in the conversation, with that ceremonious and chilly 
observance which Anne had noticed in the old days on 
the rare occasions on which she had seen them to- 
gether. Austin, he scarcely looked at. Mrs. Goss or 
Anne occasionally turned to speak to the youth, but 
their remarks were confined chiefly to requests to pass 
some condiment. 

“Have you seen over the boat?” Goss asked, at the 
end of the meal. 


21 6 THE LURE 

“Yes,” said Anne, “at least, Mrs. Goss and I walked 
round.” 

“You went up-stairs to the mosquito house?” 

“No.” ^ 

“Well, if you would care to sit up there for a while, 
I’d have the coffee and chairs taken up. One gets a 
better view of the river banks, which are pretty wide 
for some time.” 

“You’ve been up the White Nile before?” Anne 
asked. 

“A year ago — but only as far as Kosti, where your 
husband is to join us. I was going up with our pion- 
eer party, but was summoned back to England by 
cablegram. No, the part we are bound for will be 
entirely new to me. I’m looking forward to the shoot- 
ing your husband talks about. . . . Will you come up 
with us, Lucy?” 

The end of the remark was addressed to Mrs. Goss. 

She said she would, so the three went up together, 
and, sitting in the patch of shadow afforded by the 
mosquito house, watched the distant banks slip by 
them, green with the young lupins and spring growth 
near the water’s edge. The desert lay beyond, and 
above the flat horizon the bleached blue of the tropical 
sky. Water-birds rose in clouds here and there, twist- 
ing and turning in their flight with a simultaneousness 
which gave the flock the appearance of a puff of smoke 
caught in the vagaries of a wind. 

The Harriet moved forward steadily, her big paddle 
at the rear of the boat leaving a smoothened path on 
the face of the waters. An intense light brooded on 
all this flatness and monotony, giving its a beauty be- 
yond the beauty of contour or incident. 

“I wonder why they don’t use screws on these 
steamers,” said Anne, for the sake of something to 
say. She found any pause in the conversation unen- 


THE LURE 


217 


durable. She was conscious of Goss’s scrutiny of her 
on one side, and Mrs. Goss’s furtive observation of 
both on the other. 

“The paddle has been found more effective for some 
reason,” said Goss. “Have you ever been into the 
paddle-box? It’s rather effective in the impression 
it gives you of sheer force — the great wheel churning 
the venerable water of the Nile with its inexorable 
flails. There’s a door that opens on to it below. You 
should peep in, some day. It has been the death of 
a good many natives, they tell me, in Khartoum. The 
beggars go in and go to sleep on one of the giant 
flappers in the cool, and only awake to find themselves 
churned into a death too instantaneous to be very 
painful.” 

“Was that the door you were showing Austin yes- 
terday?” asked Mrs. Goss, suddenly. 

“I really don’t remember.” 

“Yes, you opened a door, just there — by the paddle- 
box. . . . How could you do so when you know the 
fascination that machinery has for him?” 

She spoke in a voice of fierce, concealed suspicion. 

“Don’t reproach me !” said Goss carelessly. “There 
is no need to worry — the door is probably kept locked. 
In any case, my dear, I don’t remember that Austin 
was with me when I went over the Hurriet yester- 
day.” 

“Yes, he was. ... I am going to see now if that 
door is locked.” 

She rose hastily and went down the steps which 
led to the lower deck. 

“My wife is always nervous about her son,” said 
Goss, in half-amused explanation. “He is not alto- 
gether normal, you know.” 

“It is very sad for her,” said Anne. “She is de- 
voted to him.” 


218 


THE LURE 


“A devotion which rather gets on one’s nerves, at 
times,” said Goss, with a shade of irritation, throw- 
ing away the stump of one cigarette and lighting an- 
other. ‘Tm sorry — you smoke, don’t you ?” He held 
out his case. 

‘‘No, thank you,” said Anne. 

“You’ve given up smoking since your marriage?” 

“I never smoked.” 

“Surely ” 

“You’re confounding me with some one else,” she 
said, with a smile. 

“Why, Anne — I mean, Mrs. Host, forgive me! — 
I could never confound you with any one else. By the 
way, have you forgiven me for making you come?” 

“Almost,” she replied, more at her ease with him at 
last. 

“I was sure you would. Confess! it was a species 
of stage fright. Once plunged into the waters of a 
very innocent deception, you can laugh at yourself. 
You need not answer that, and we’ll taboo the subject 
of the past altogether from this moment if you wish, 
though — well, I was very fond of the Anne of then, 
and I think she was a little fond of me. . . . Forgive 
me! don’t look annoyed, I shan’t offend again. May 
I say one thing — it doesn’t touch the past at all.” 

“What is it?” she asked, unwillingly. 

“Well, you have changed considerably. Miss Moor- 
house — that slender, impulsive, charmingly gauche 
creature is gone. But Mrs. Host — the woman — is in- 
finitely more attractive.” 

“Every one changes, I suppose,” said Anne in the 
most matter-of-fact tone she could summon. “We are 
both of us older. But can’t we drop personalities? 
Tell me about this company — I mean the crocodile 
farming one.” 

“There’s not much to tell you that would interest 


THE LURE 


219 


you, I’m afraid. It was my idea originally, an in- 
spiration which flashed into my mind — before the Orb 
went bankrupt — in the course of a conversation with 
an American leather king. You know crocodile skin 
is already a largely used article in the leather trade. 
Now that the price of other skins is steadily rising, it 
could be used a great deal more than it is at present, 
if the demand for crocodile leather were stimulated 
judiciously by the trade. Now most of the skins come 
from India and Mexico. Cow-punchers make a kind 
of diversion of shooting 'em in the bayous of Mexico 
and then trading the skins to dealers who come up 
country. It’s slow work, I’ve heard — the brutes (it’s 
mostly alligators there) only sun themselves in the 
morning; after then it’s a case of a quick shot as a 
snout rises from the water. Shooting the alligator is 
not a sport that commends itself to the Mexicans in 
any wholesale or exterminatory way, though. The 
reptile’s a useful river scavenger and keeps the water 
free from pollution. Well, here the crocodile is 
vermin. Any one can shoot him, any one does — sel- 
dom bothering about picking him up. He’s left to 
rot in the river. No one seems to realize that just as 
the ostrich can be farmed for his feathers, the croco- 
dile in a climate in which he flourishes, could be 
farmed with equal advantages. That’s where we come 
in. I have had special closures designed for us where 
the beasts are to be preserved, fed, pampered, culti- 
vated, just as any other trade product is cultivated. 
And it’s to find an ultimate site — some of those 
swampy khors up the Bahr-el-Zeraf, for instance, for 
the farm and the curing-houses that we’re on our way 
now.” 

“But that is just where the swamps are so bad. 
Will you find white men to stand against the malaria?” 

“There is one white man who can live anywhere 


220 


THE LURE 


and on anything — and that’s the Greek. The work- 
men will be natives.” 

“And the crocodiles — how will you feed them?” 
asked Anne. The Goss who talked to her was the 
bland, optimistic, enthusiastic schemer that she had 
known when the Orb was started. 

“What do they live on now? Besides, we have 
special schemes for feeding them.” 

“They are horrible animals,” said Anne, with a 
shudder. “There is something more vicious-looking 
about a crocodile than anything in God’s creation, to 
my mind. I’ve only seen them in the Zoo.” 

“The specimens in the Zoo are very poor. You 
may see better ones than that before we get to Kosti. 
I shot one last year just below Kosti, though I didn’t 
kill him.” 

“Poor thing!” said Anne. 

“How like a woman — to label the thing vicious in 
one breath and to pity it in the next !” 

“It didn’t make itself, and the suffering of any 
creature is terrible.” 

“I am afraid I am not a sentimentalist. My only 
regret is that we missed the carcass. I think we 
value life a good deal too much. It would be a good 
thing if many superfluous creatures, animal and hu- 
man, were removed.” 

“But you can’t approve of murder.” 

“In some cases murder would be most salutary. 
It is sanctioned in war and in the case of the con- 
victed criminal. Why only in those two cases? I 
would have the murder of fools treated as commend- 
able; the murder of superfluous and mischief-making 
old females who are a scourge to their immediate sec- 
tion of the community ; the murder of people who talk 
washy and seditious nonsense; and a good many 
others.” 


THE LURE 


221 


“Then what constitutes the right to live?” 

“Brain. That and beauty. I wouldn’t destroy a 
beautiful woman if she were ten times a Messalina, 
on the off-chance that she might propagate something 
good to look upon.” 

Anne thought of a remark she had once heard Miss 
Neville make as to Goss’s immoral lack of real opin- 
ion. He was just talking. 

But just then Mrs. Goss reappeared. Goss looked 
up at her. 

“Satisfied yourself?” 

“The door was not locked. I found the engineer, 
and as he said the key was lost, I have had the door 
barred up.” 

“Permanently ?” 

“They can undo it if there is actual need with a 
screwdriver.” 

“You see to what lengths a mother’s anxiety can 
drive her, Mrs. Host,” said Goss, turning to Anne 
with a smile. 

Anne felt uncomfortable, she knew not why. Some 
secret antagonism between the husband and wife was 
in progress of which she knew nothing. Mrs. Goss’s 
haunting eyes, her restless watchfulness, roused in her 
a feeling amounting to pity. 

She uttered a commonplace about woman’s instinct 
and set herself to talk to the elder woman with delib- 
erate effort. Dull, silent and disagreeable as Mrs. 
Goss had hitherto shown herself, there was a woman 
somewhere beneath the husk — since there was a 
mother. 


CHAPTER IV 


A NNE awoke at sunrise on the second day to find, 
when she looked from the cabin door, much the 
same shore-scape as the day before, though it 
was lit with the rosy fire of the tropical morning. 
At a little distance on the deck, one of the bahari was 
prostrating himself in prayer. The natives in the nug- 
gur lashed to the steamer were already up and chat- 
tering like magpies; the young Sudani woman, semi- 
clothed as ever, when she caught sight of Anne above 
in her wrapper, smiled a cheerful greeting. 

Anne bathed and dressed quickly, but found that 
she was still the first of the party to be up. The sky 
still had the translucence of early morning. The river 
mirrored the light on its broad bosom ; the banks were 
too distant to be interesting. Ibrahim brought her 
breakfast, and this finished, she established herself 
in a long chair up-stairs on the roof-deck with a book. 
She was in a mood for dreams; the great river, the 
wide horizon, were suggestive of infinity, of the great 
breathing spaces of eternity, of the vast leisure of 
non-existence; and her unrest of yesterday seemed 
petty and unworthy. 

She soon heard voices on the deck below — the Gosses 
were evidently at breakfast — but she was taking pleas- 
ure in her solitude and was not sorry that they had 
not discovered her whereabouts just yet. 

Presently Mrs. Goss appeared, together with the in- 
evitable Austin. 


222 


THE LURE 


223 

Anne wished them good-morning, and set herself to 
be agreeable. 

“Huntly is working/’ said Mrs. Goss. “He did not 
know you were up here already — you must have 
breakfasted very early.” 

“One gets into the habit of early rising in Khar- 
toum,” Anne replied. “My husband and I usually 
get a gallop before breakfast.” 

“I rarely sleep well,” said Mrs. Goss. “The only 
time I doze off thoroughly is just before daybreak. 
So I am scarcely ever down before nine o’clock. And 
Huntly keeps up his London habit of going to bed 
late and getting up late, even in Egypt.” 

“But you ought to sleep better here, where one 
almost lives in the open air,” Anne remarked. 

“It is not only a case of insomnia,” Mrs. Goss re- 
plied. “I am bothered by a good deal of pain — and 
I dare not use too many opiates. . . . Perhaps you 
didn’t know — I have only about six months more to 
live, the specialist told me.” 

“Surely he must be mistaken!” Anne exclaimed, as- 
tonished and shocked. She did not ask of what dis- 
ease. 

“No — I have been to others — in Berlin. They said 
the same.” 

She spoke without emotion. Here was the secret of 
her emaciated face and haunted eyes. She was a dying 
woman, and she knew it. 

“I am sorry,” said Anne. “But think what hun- 
dreds of times these specialists have been mistaken!” 

“I wish I could believe that they were,” said Mrs. 
Goss, “I want to live. I must live!” Passion under- 
lay the quiet tones of her voice. 

Why should she desire life so fervently? Anne 
wondered. There was something more than mere 
physical clinging to existence in her words. And yet 


224 


THE LURE 


hers could not be a very happy or full life : she had 
no joie de vivre, no apparent reason for finding this 
world difficult to leave. She certainly did not love 
her husband, she could have no ambitions for her 
feeble-witted son. 

“If you desire to live so intensely, I think it is a 
very hopeful sign,” said Anne. “This climate ought 
to do something for you.” 

“The river — ” interposed Austin, gleefully, “the 
pretty river !” 

“It is pretty,” said his mother, with unseeing eyes. 
The youth went to the side upon which the nuggur 
was attached, and taking out his case, took out a 
cigarette and threw it on the native boat. The Sudani 
girl caught it before it could touch the boards, and 
showed two rows of white teeth in a smile. 

“I’ll give her another,” cried Austin, delighted, and 
threw them over one by one until the case was empty. 

“You’ve none for yourself, now,” said Mrs. Goss 
suddenly noticing. “And there are no shops where 
we are going.” 

“There’s a big box down-stairs. In Huntly’s cabin. 
He showed me.” 

“I’ve a box in mine,” Mrs. Goss said quickly. “You 
are not to take Huntly’s. I’ve forbidden you to. I 
shall be angry with you.” 

“He said I might.” 

“You are not to,” insisted Mrs. Goss, with empha- 
sis. “Not even when he offers you one.” Her eyes 
burnt, as she tried to impress it on him, with that 
white-hot look which seemed to lend him understand- 
ing. “If he offers you one, you will say ‘No, thank 
you!’ . . . What will you say ?” 

“No, thank you,” repeated the young man, as if 
he were three years old instead of twenty-two. 

Mrs. Goss saw the astonished expression that passed 


THE LURE 


225 


over Anne’s face. “My husband smokes cigarettes 
which are too strong for Austin. They go to his 
head,” she explained, apologetically. 

“But why not ask Mr. Goss not to give your son 
any of his cigarettes?” Anne said, unable to keep the 
words back. 

“He forgets,” Mrs. Goss replied after a pause. She 
eyed Anne furtively. “He forgets.” 

Again Anne had the odd conviction that there was 
something behind the scenes which was hidden from 
her; some mystery to which she and the rest of the 
world possessed no key. 

She saw nothing of Goss until lunch. He had been 
spending the morning, he said, over figures: he had 
to place certain figures before the Sudan Government 
on his return, and they must be in order. He hoped 
that she had slept well, and promised to find her a 
book which he had in his cabin which described the 
topography of the country on either side of the river. 
After lunch, at which he drank the whisky and soda 
usually shunned till after sundown by residents in the 
Sudan, he went unromantically to sleep in his chair, 
while Anne and Mrs. Goss talked together in low tones. 
Then Anne returned to her morning’s seat above, and 
watched the gliding panorama of the shore. Now 
they passed a village, composed of a few straw huts; 
now a group of naked shepherds dragging resisting 
sheep into the Nile to wash them; now miles on miles 
of silent sunshine and uneventful country. The heat 
had become intense — the thermometer registered 
ninety in the shade — and soon sleep overtook her as it 
had overtaken Goss. 

She awoke to find him standing near her, his field- 
glasses in his hand, scanning the banks. As she 
moved, he turned, smiling. “You have had your 
siesta too.” 


226 THE LURE 

“It’s a Khartoum habit I’ve got into,” said Anne. 
“Where are we?” 

“We are nearing Dueim, I should think. Any way, 
we should get there before nightfall.” 

“Dueim?” exclaimed Anne. “Why, that is where 
Peter used to disembark as a starting-place into Kor- 
dofan, I believe.” 

“Was your husband in Kordofan?” 

“Yes, some time — before he went to the Bahr-el- 
Ghazal.” 

“Yes, Dueim’s the jumping-off place for the inte- 
rior. Trading caravans come there. We shall stop 
there to-night — we could go on shore, if you like.” 

“I should like,” said Anne. 

“I shall not make as good a guide as your husband, 
because I don’t know the place, and he does. But it 
will not be the first time we have adventured to- 
gether.” 

“Is it a town?” asked Anne, ignoring the last part 
of his remark. 

“It is a trading station — a big one, but there’s not 
much town about it. They’ve a good mosque — built 
by Government, but the rest of the buildings are the 
ordinary native sort, as far as I remember. . . 

He took the seat which Mrs. Goss had left vacant. 
“May I sit here?” 

“Of course,” said Anne. “It’s Mrs. Goss’s chair.” 

“So you and she had a long pow-wow together, 
this morning?” 

“Yes,” Anne replied. She added after a pause, 
“She told me about the state of her health. I was 
so sorry — I had no idea that she was ill.” 

“You mustn’t place too much credence in what 
she tells you about herself,” Goss replied slowly, still 
keeping his field-glasses levelled at the bank. Then 
he put them down and lowered his voice. “I should 


THE LURE 


227 


not like to speak about it to most people — but you, 
Anne, with your quick observance, surely you see for 
yourself? ... I needn’t express it. The mental in- 
capacity of her son is not altogether uninherited. 
. . . My wife suffers from delusions at times; delu- 
sions about her health, delusions about her son, delu- 
sions about me.” 

He spoke with a lack of self-commiseration that 
struck Anne as being almost pathetic. Immediately 
she rushed into the other extreme, and her feeling of 
reproach became once more warm-hearted partisan- 
ship. A man of his temperament, hampered by such 
a wife! And yet he took her about with him; treated 
her with courteous consideration, with kindness even. 
She could understand now Mrs. Goss’s odd behavior, 
her suspicious manner, her haunted eyes, her general 
incomprehensibility. And for her, too, she felt pity — 
poor thing! 

“It is very hard for you,” she said, her brown eyes 
filling with swift sympathy. 

“Oh, I’m not to be pitied : after all, I suppose good 
people would say I don’t deserve much luck — though 
that theory of retribution is as senseless a one as ever 
narrow-minded fools invented. But I like you to 
understand, because ” 

He broke off adroitly, and she guessed at what he 
tried to convey more effectively by the silence than 
by words. He had awakened just the chivalrous spirit 
of defence in her that he intended. Anne had the 
woman’s instinct for embracing the cause of the mis- 
understood, the defenceless, the lost hope, and such 
an appeal to her heart was, therefore, armed with pe- 
culiar potency. 

He was re-invested with the glamor which she had 
felt to be lacking in him since they had met under 
such different circumstances. He was once more the 


228 


THE LURE 


exceptional man, combating exceptional odds, and 
carrying it off before the world so carelessly that it 
misjudged him. 

Goss was wise enough to be content with his ad- 
vance. He found Anne infinitely more attractive now 
than ever she had been in the ingenue stage. Physi- 
cally, she had gained in contour, color, womanliness; 
mentally, she was riper; morally, she had, as a mar- 
ried woman, the charm of a fruit that is at one and 
the same time accessible and forbidden. 

He made his conversation throughout the afternoon 
strictly impersonal, and won her good opinion by so 
doing. He brought her the book he had promised, 
and pointed out in it references to the places of inter- 
est they would pass on the next day. No one could 
excel him as a sympathetic and amusing companion, 
and Anne frankly enjoyed the four hours to tea-time. 

It was dusk before they reached Dueim, though the 
sunset which lingers so short a time in tropical coun- 
tries was still flag-red in the western horizon, melting 
by soft degrees into transparent primrose and eggshell 
green, and then into the vast blue of night overhead. 
It would not be dark, however, for the moon was 
almost full, and rising already. On the warm air 
an indescribable odor was borne to the steamer, a 
fragrance as of all the gums and incense of Araby, 
drifting from the sandy shore. It was fresh, too — it 
seemed that this naked land, after sleeping through 
the torrid heat of the day, awoke gracious and smiling 
like one of her dark-skinned daughters, to adorn her- 
self with perfumes and garments against the grateful 
advent of the night. 

As the Harriet was brought as near to the shore 
as the shelving shallows permitted, a congregation of 
black figures, for the most part only clothed about the 
loins, waded out to her, chattering, smiling, extending 


THE LURE 


229 

brawny arms ready to carry any who desired it to dry 
land. 

Mrs. Goss refused outright, for Austin was in ter- 
ror at the sight of the shining black faces, and begged 
her not to go. But Anne gathered her skirts about 
and was lowered from the deck to a strange perch be- 
tween two big Sudanese, who bore her on their bare 
black shoulders, their arms interlocked for security, 
through the water and the muddy strip by the river’s 
edge, and set her down on the clean dry sand beyond. 

Goss had already been carried ashore by one of the 
bahari, and stood awaiting her. The air, keen, thin, 
and pure as it was, was always burdened with the 
smell of spices, and rows on rows of bales and boxes 
stood on the sandy strand in the moonlight. It was 
like an African legend; Anne almost expected to see 
a train of ghostly camels pad their way, laden with 
rare merchandise, towards the city of the swarthiest 
of the Three Kings who followed the star, a phantom 
city in the mysterious south. 

“Shall we explore a bit?” Goss asked her, and they 
went their way through streets built of little square 
houses, set apart, with a wide road between, clean, 
sandy and moonlit. Most of the houses were shops, 
or rather booths, in which gums, powders, grains and 
spices were exposed for sale in baskets of gray-green 
halfa. They traversed one street after the other, each 
equally deserted in appearance, and silent except for 
the low conversation of white-clad figures, seated or 
gathered in groups here and there by an open door, 
or the click of dominoes in a little mud-built cafe at 
the corner. 

“What a delicious scent!” Anne exclaimed. “They 
must be burning incense somewhere. It can’t be the 
raw spices. I wonder if we could buy some?” 

“Let us try,” Goss replied. 


230 


THE LURE 


An oil-lamp was burning in one of the shops. At 
the sound of their stopping footsteps, the owner, a 
tall man wrapped in a white woollen garment, his 
dark face almost featureless in the shade, arose like 
a shadow and came forward. 

Goss had no Arabic. Anne could only get as far 
as “Ana aous — ” (I want) and completed her demand 
by a demure pantomime to indicate smelling. The 
shadow evidently thought he understood her, for he 
smiled an ebon smile, and with a reassuring gesture, 
went quickly to a shop over the way. He had evi- 
dently gone to fetch something, and they waited until 
he returned, triumphant — with a bottle of cheap Eng- 
lish-made Ess Bouquet ! It was such an abomination, 
such an anomaly, in this strange and perfumed town 
of sand and sandal-wood that both Goss and Anne had 
to laugh. The advent of Ibrahim, the English-speak- 
ing suffragi of the steamer, who was also stretching 
his limbs or visiting friends, was a timely one, for 
he explained the situation to the puzzled shopkeeper, 
and procured at Anne’s request a lump of the sweet- 
scented gum used for burning, and a large piece of 
sandalwood. 

Anne felt as happy as a child. Surely the spirit 
of adventure lurked in these moonlit streets of spices, 
this Nileside city from whence sombre caravans set 
forth into the heart of Africa to return laden with 
fragrant spices and precious grain. 

They passed through more silent, moon-bathed 
ways; past wide-doored interiors faintly lit by the 
flicker of oil-lamps or shamadans — candles screened by 
glass shades. Anne paused to peep into one of these, 
and saw the simple domestic arrangements — a dark 
skinned woman sitting cross-legged on an angarib * 

* Native bed, a wooden frame with a lattice of leathern thongs. 


THE LURE 


231 


suckling a baby, and smiling the patient, happy smile 
of motherhood; a man kneeling to make coffee in a 
brown earthenware pot over a small charcoal fire. 
Bare as it was, the hut was clean and sweet-smelling, 
for the Sudani is as cleanly by nature as the Egyptian 
is dirty. Anne wished them good-evening in Arabic, 
a greeting which they courteously and good-temperedly 
returned. The little black idyll, with its silence and 
content, was part of the vast peace of the place and of 
the African night. 

“This is the last setting I could have imagined you 
in, and yet you fit in with it wonderfully well/’ said 
Goss to Anne. 

She smiled. “Do I ?” 

“You are in harmony with the spell of the place. 
You struck no jarring note as you stood in the door- 
way of that little hut just now; you had the look of 
a beneficent spirit at the threshold.” 

“The beneficent West,” said Anne, with a laugh. 
“Well, we have done good after all! Those people 
wouldn’t have been in such placid security in the time 
of the Mahdi. In those days, that woman could never 
have been certain that war or pestilence or famine 
or the cruelty of her kind might not destroy every- 
thing she held most dear within twenty-four hours. 
... As it is, I can almost envy her.” 

“Envy her? What?” 

“Her happy motherhood,” said Anne, flushing a lit- 
tle in the dark. It was a night when sacredly human 
things could be spoken of, for the heart of humanity 
in this African city was beating close to the surface 
of things seen and heard and uttered. And Goss was 
adapting himself with the skill of an artist to her mood ; 
he had contrived to fill her with the sense that he, 
too, had come under the magic of the place and the 
hour. 


232 


THE LURE 


“What a primitive woman it is, after all,” said Goss,, 
after a silence. “I wonder if your husband under- 
stands you.” 

“Of course he does,” she replied quickly, jarred out 
of her moment of unreserve. 

“Don’t be on the defensive. I know that he must 
be fond of you — he wouldn’t be flesh and blood if he 
weren’t. But it takes something more than that to 
understand a woman.” 

“What then?” 

“It takes the same primitive quality in the man — 
a more brutal form of it, perhaps, to do that. The 
egotistical male atavism in a man understands without 
reasoning about it. But your nice, conventional Eng- 
lishman doesn’t consider the primitive polite.” 

“You don’t know Peter,” she said, with a laugh 
that was a little nervous. “He’s not a bit conventional 
— that is in the bloodless way you mean.” 

“I was only generalizing,” he replied. “But I don’t 
mind admitting that I’m jealous of your Peter. Don’t 
be angry with me for a confession like that. But when 
I think back ... I have no right to do so, and yet 
it is human. Isn’t it only human to have thought and 
dreamt about a woman who belonged so much to the 
impossible, the romantic, inaccessible, moonlit world 
of impossibility, that one bowed one’s head to the in- 
evitable and went away ; and then to see some one less 
fettered climb up to the heights and claim her — isn’t 
envy natural, under the circumstances?” 

She was silent, frightened that her heart could beat 
so fast, angry with him that he had broken his word. 

Then she turned to him, desperate and frank. 

“Please don’t make it difficult for both of us,” she 
said. “If I were a humbug, I could pretend that the 
past meant absolutely nothing to me. But it did, 
though I have forgotten it. Don’t make me remem- 


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233 

ber. I am happy, and I don’t want even to think of 
the unhappiness of long ago.” 

‘‘Was it such unhappiness ?” he asked. 

She made no answer. 

“And now you are happy — absolutely contented. 
Then I can say nothing except that I am glad. I am 
very glad.” 

They walked on together for a moment without 
speaking. Then he continued, in an altered voice: 
“Could you remember, dear?” 

“Not in loyalty to a man I love and respect,” she 
said, mastering herself and shutting out of her soul 
the music of the Pied Piper that echoed, if faintly, 
like an enchantment born of this enchanted night. 
She invoked Peter, with his honest blue eyes, as a 
Catholic invokes a saint when he approaches the Ve- 
nusberg. 

They were on the shore again, their feet sinking 
into sand that the moon turned into powdered silver. 
The heaps of sweet-smelling bales cast shadows like 
chasms behind them ; the Nile was blanched and white 
as its name, running on its northward way like liquid 
light. The country of savage things, of mystery, was 
beyond and about them. Here Nature was paramount, 
compelling, vast. Before it sincerity is wrung from 
the heart. 

“Can’t you see,” said Anne, turning to him, “that 
even to talk like this is a disloyalty? I can’t pretend. 
Yes, I could remember — I am not the sort of woman 
who forgets.” 

“Then ” he began. 

She stopped him. “But I am not the sort of woman 
either who cannot fight memories down. Sooner than 
be haunted by them, I would get off the boat to-mor- 
row and go back.” 

“That would be extreme,” he said, smiling at her. 


234 


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'Loyalty has to be extreme,” she said, smiling back. 
"Then, with your permission, we are as we were.” 
"Agreed,” she replied. But there were ghosts in 
her heart, all the same. 

Goss knew it and was not ill content 


CHAPTER V 


T HE Hurriet was to “wood” at Dobeikir the next 
day. With every mile she steamed into wilder 
country. The banks were narrower and more 
wooded. Some swiftly-moving animals in the low 
scrub-like trees proved to be monkeys when examined 
through field-glasses. A little island of sudd floating 
down-stream reminded the travellers that they would 
soon be in the sudd- country — the miles and miles of 
marsh and reed which make an inland Sea of Sara- 
gossa of the river, a district only inhabited by the 
crocodile, the hippopotamus, the river bird and the 
mosquito; a vast and constantly shifting forest of 
weed and reed which needs constant vigilance lest it 
block the river when portions of it are detached by the 
currents and set adrift. 

Once a hippopotamus raised his big black and pink 
snout from the river, but by the time that Goss had 
fetched his rifle the innocent monster had plunged 
again below the surface, not to reappear until he was 
well out of range. 

“Wooding,” for there is no other fuel to be pro- 
cured up the White Nile, might take three hours, the 
engineer told Goss, so he went off with a shikari he 
had engaged at Khartoum and a couple of rifles into 
the parched scrub and grass in the hope of getting 
some sport. He asked Anne if she would accompany 
him, but she declined. The two women and Austin 
were accordingly left on board, to go ashore if they 
pleased. A procession of native porters bore the logs 
235 


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236 

destined for the furnace from the piled-up heaps on 
the shore to the nuggur, by means of a bridge of 
wooden piles and rushes built out into the water, from 
which a plank served as gangway. Their progress 
was so leisurely that it was comprehensible why wood- 
ing was a lengthy operation. After watching them 
for some time, Anne decided that she would explore 
the little village that lay to the left, and Mr. Goss 
and Austin said they would go with her. 

Anne’s belief in what Goss had confided to her 
about his wife’s tendency to delusion had been 
strengthened that morning by the way in which Mrs. 
Goss stealthily watched her husband. Once when 
Anne and Goss were talking for a moment alone, they 
turned quickly to see that she had stolen back and 
was listening to their conversation — which was inno- 
cent enough. 

Anne felt kindly towards her, in spite of her appar- 
ent oddity, for surely here was tragedy worse than 
death. Strangely enough, the idea that there was any 
tendency to insanity in Mrs. Goss had never struck 
her until Goss had put it into her mind. That the 
elder woman was warped, suspicious, unintelligent, 
was all that had occurred to Anne. But after all, 
as she reflected, the line that demarcates eccentricity 
from insanity is very imperceptible. 

They walked out over the rude landing-stage to 
the shore. The country was of a uniform khaki color, 
approaching sometimes to orange. A village, sur- 
rounded by a few scrubby trees and high, dried grass 
lay before them. It was composed of nothing but 
straw huts like beehives, their entrances protected 
here and there by zaribas or enclosures of thorn and 
grass. Naked children and wolf-like dogs came out 
to meet them and stare at them. Barefoot women 
draped about with a single mantle came out to view 


THE LURE 


237 

them and smile at them. And above, the sun poured 
down vertically ; the heat was intense, the very air 
simmered in it as if it were molten. 

Mrs. Goss talked sensibly enough. Whenever she 
was apart from her husband, her manner was normal. 
But she was not a stimulating companion. For her 
there was no beauty, no attraction in the place. Like 
most commonplace people, she remarked only on the 
impropriety of the children’s nudity, on the discom- 
fort of the tukls, the “ugliness” as she put it, of the 
natives ; the intensity of the heat. 

Again Anne wondered why Goss had brought her. 
Even she did not give him credit for wishing to bur- 
den himself unnecessarily. If Mrs. Goss’s health were 
not in question why had he brought her up here? 
And, having brought them to Khartoum, he could 
easily have left them there, and not dragged them on 
this further pilgrimage. 

She asked Mrs. Goss outright : “Why did you come 
up with your husband on such a trip? I’m afraid it’ll 
be a good deal hotter than this further down. Surely 
you would have been more comfortable in Khartoum.” 

“I could not leave Austin,” Mrs. Goss replied. 

“But he could have stayed too.” 

“Huntly wished him to come with him.” 

Anne thought this absurd on the face of it. Cer- 
tainly Mrs. Goss suffered from delusions if she im- 
agined that her husband insisted on being accom- 
panied by his imbecile step-son. Why, Goss’s irrita- 
tion at Austin’s presence was perfectly evident! 

“He is attached to him, I suppose,” she said, with 
the indulgent acquiescence with which one speaks to 
a person whose sanity is doubtful. 

Mrs. Goss fixed her eyes sharply upon Anne. 

“Why do you talk like that?” she said “Do you 
think me mad? You know that he hates him.” Her 


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238 

tone became almost vehement, though she did not raise 
it. “I have watched you — you think that Huntly is 
kind, that he is human. I tell you he has a side which 
is inhuman, which is devilish. Perhaps you think me 
mad for talking like this. Watch him. You will 
see for yourself, if you are not blinded like all the 
women that know him. He has no principles, he has 
no conscience. He takes what he wants, discards 
what he does not want. He told you so the other 
afternoon. I heard him. You did not believe that 
he was literal. But he was.” 

“Mrs. Goss! How can you talk of your husband 
like that!” said Anne in the tone of gentle reproof 
that one uses to a child. 

“He has probably told you that I am half-crazed. 
I am crazy, perhaps, for taking you into my confidence 
when you neither want it nor believe it. But I like 
you. I am alone in the world. There is no one but 
me to protect Austin — to guard him.” 

“Guard him — from what?” asked Anne, alarmed 
at the storm she had raised. 

But Mrs. Goss was staring straight ahead, her 
hard eyes blurred with unshed tears. 

“I’m a fool to talk to you like this. I might know 
that you cannot understand. . . ” 

“Oh, Mrs. Goss, truly, truly I am sorry if you are 
unhappy; if you are anxious about your son. I can 
understand that you have more than the ordinary 
share of protection as part of your mother’s duty to- 
wards him. But don’t you think, perhaps, through 
thinking about it, that you may have exaggerated 
things to yourself? One is so apt to.” 

Mrs. Goss gave a short laugh. “You have only 
said in a longer way that you don’t believe me. As I 
said, I was a fool to think that you might. Huntly 
is so plausible; he has such a way with women.” 


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239 


Anne did not know what to answer. 

Austin had dallied behind. His fear of the natives 
had disappeared. He peered inside the straw tukls, 
at the hens that scratched their living outside, at a 
woman grinding corn between two stones, one sta- 
tionary, the other rubbed by hand; at the naked chil- 
dren, and at the goats tethered to the zariba. His 
mother called to him. 

“He has an insatiable curiosity,” she said, turning 
to Anne. “Particularly about mechanism and ani- 
mals. He is absolutely fearless. Animals are aware 
of it, somehow, and he has a curious power over them. 
The keepers at the Zoo know him well; we often go 
there together.” 

Austin still lingered, like an absorbed child, and 
Mrs. Goss called him again. Once more her pathetic 
eagerness to show that the boy’s imbecility was not 
hopeless, roused a great pity in Anne. She said im- 
pulsively — 

“If it will relieve you in any way of anxiety, Mrs. 
Goss, I will always try to keep an eye on him if you 
are not there, in case he should get into danger or 
trouble.” 

“Thank you,” Mrs. Goss answered briefly. 

They had traversed the village, and were on a 
beaten track leading into the parched underwood be- 
yond. Anne thought it wiser to go no further, so 
they returned to the boat. 

Goss returned at half-past twelve, tired and not 
in the best of humors. He had shot some guinea- 
fowl, nothing more. His shikari had pointed out the 
fresh spoor of a hippopotamus, but they had sighted 
no big game of any kind. 

Lunch restored his good spirits, and the Hurriet 
was again on her way up-stream by one o’clock. Anne 
began to think with relief of the morrow, when Peter 


240 


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would be on board. Something that was suggestive 
of disaster, something sinister, seemed to permeate 
the atmosphere of the boat. In a kind of nervous- 
ness she had avoided being alone with Goss that day; 
and the constant presence of his wife seemed to ren- 
der him listless, irritated, depressed. In repose his 
face assumed the heavy lines of middle age, there 
were furrows left by care and hard living about his 
mouth and eyes. Could he, too, be haunted by some 
fear of his own, as his wife was haunted by hers? 
j “You don’t look well,” Anne said to him suddenly. 
His wife was sitting not far from them, intent on 
reading a novel. 

“Don’t I? I’m fagged. The truth is, I’m out of 
condition. Too much London, too much work.” 
He looked at her meaningly, and added, “Last night 
I slept badly. The moon at Dueim affected my peace 
of mind. 

“Don’t work so much,” Anne returned, in the most 
normal voice she could summon. 

“If I can make this show a success, I shan’t. 
There’s money in it. But I need capital. I’m hedged 
in for want of capital. I’m hampered on every side 
because of the lack of it.” He spoke with a touch of 
savage peevishness. 

“You have a good many shareholders, surely?” 

“Mostly prospective. They’re cautious. I want to 
show ’em results — results in solid Bank of England 
gold. And to get results needs more capital — my 
capital or some one else’s.” 

“If I had some, I’d invest in your crocodiles,” she 
returned lightly. 

“Generous woman !” He gave her one of the veiled 
looks which said so much. Then he lowered his voice 
so that it could not carry to his wife. “Dear, gener- 
ous woman!” 


THE LURE 


241 


The blood rose to Anne’s face uncomfortably. Mrs. 
Goss raised her head quickly, noticing the softer tone, 
though she had not heard the conversation. 

“We are talking about money,” said Anne, turning 
to her, and speaking at random to cover her own con- 
fusion and his indiscretion. 

“I was saying to Mrs. Host that some of the pros- 
pective shareholders showed themselves singularly 
cautious,” Goss said, lighting a cigar. 

“I have told Huntly that I do not intend to put 
any of my capital into it,” Mrs. Goss said coldly to 
Anne. 

‘‘My wife’s confidence in me is touching,” said 
Goss, with a laugh. “But I have never urged her to 
commit herself to my rash schemes — have I, my dear 
girl?” 

“Never,” she returned in an unemotional voice. 

Anne felt a touch of indignation. Really, this 
woman, suffering from hallucinations or not, was the 
jarring element on board. It was she who was re- 
sponsible for this all-pervading atmosphere of unhap- 
piness. And whatever her hysterical imagination 
might lead her to believe, she was sane enough for 
practical purposes, and therefore answerable. 

The shikari ran up on the deck at this moment, and 
going to Goss pointed to the bank further on. “Tim- 
sah!” he said. 

Anne could see nothing. Goss lifted his field- 
glasses quickly, exclaiming, “Crocodile! I’ll get a 
shot at him.” 

He dashed into the cabin, and waited, his rifle 
raised, ready to take aim when they got parellel. 

Anne saw it at last — something which lay like a log, 
barely distinguishable from the mud on which it was 
sunning itself, a gray-green, inert object some four or 
five feet long. The sloth, the stillness of the thing, 


242 


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filled her with repulsion as she viewed it through the 
glasses which Goss had laid down. 

Goss fired. The shot rang out over the silent place. 
The log-like mass became possessed of sudden life, it 
lashed right and left, first with the upper and then 
with the lower part of its body, in agony. Then it 
slipped back into the water and disappeared. 

“He’s a done-for croc,” said Goss, pleased. “I got 
him square in the middle. He can’t live.” 

“I hope it will die soon,” said Anne, sickened a 
little. 

“Oh, I can’t waste pity over the crocodiles,” re- 
plied Goss, with a laugh. “I’m sorry we can’t stop to 
pick him up, but we must get to Kosti to-morrow 
morning to meet your husband there.” 

Mrs. Goss scarcely lifted her eyes from her book. 
Austin stared, fascinated. 

“Him very bad animal,” said Ibrahim, who was 
preparing tea, watching Anne’s face. “Him eat peo- 
ple, eat wimmins and childrens.” 

“Yes, I know,” said Anne. “I know he is an out- 
law. I suppose he is best dead.” 

“Like all women, you would let the unfit survive,” 
observed Goss, who had put back his rifle in his cabin, 
and stretched himself once more in the easy-chair. 

“No, no,” answered Anne. “But I hated to see the 
poor thing writhe.” 

“He wasn’t worth a second shot,” said Goss, care- 
lessly. “Next time, to oblige you, I’ll see that no kick 
is left in the brute. We shall see plenty further up, 
but I expect we shan’t waste good ammunition on 
them, but save it for better things.” 


CHAPTER VI 


“/^\H, Peter, Pm glad you’ve come!” Anne 
was sitting on her camp-bed in their cabin, 
while her husband unpacked his suit-case 
on the floor. 

“I was pretty sick at not starting off with you, old 
lady, but it couldn’t be helped, as I told you in my 
note. Still, most of our way’s yet before us. . . . 
How do you like it, so far?” 

“I shall like it ten times better now that you’re 
here. Oh, it’s been interesting. I’ve se£n my first 
hippo and first crocodile, and yesterday we passed 
Abba Island where the Mahdi was, and the river birds 
have been wonderful.” 

“And Dueim?” 

“Yes, I liked Dueim,” she said, with some restraint. 

“What is the fly in the amber, Anne?” he asked, 
with an amused smile, hunting down a pair of socks 
in an ill-packed corner. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” she replied listlessly. “A gen- 
eral sort of malaise.” 

“Are you taking quinine?” he inquired sternly. 
“Two grains at sunset as I told you.” 

Anne smiled. “No. But it’s nothing to do with 
health.” How could she tell him of the vague un- 
happiness which had taken possession of her soul, of 
the fears that were so formless? “I don’t like Mrs. 
Goss much,” she added, woman-like giving a second- 
ary reason rather than the prime cause. 

243 


244 


THE LURE 


“She didn’t strike me as a peculiarly pleasant lady, 
I admit,” Peter replied, pushing the suit-case under- 
neath the bed. “Where did I put those cigarettes?” 

Anne reached for the case, and threw it across. He 
caught it, and came over to kiss her cheek. 

“The unpleasantness of Mrs. Goss needn’t matter 
so much now that your husband is here,” he said 
cheerfully. “We can be fairly independent of the 
Gosses. I’ve been looking forward to this trip with 
you, kiddy, more than I can say. It’s a piece of 
Heaven-sent luck, our going like this. Of course, 
you’re not in mighty uncivilized country yet. This 
part of the river is infested by the tourist.” 

“Why, we haven’t seen a single boat!” 

“I mean comparatively. We should run across the 
Candace to-morrow — she’s a faster boat than this, 
and she’s due at El Dueim to-day, early. She’s carry- 
ing tourists. Sir Andrew Bainton, the famous sur- 
geon, is aboard. He’s going down to the Lado En- 
clave for some big game, they told me. We shan’t 
be out of the beaten track just yet.” 

“It’s fairly wild now, Peter. With all these hip- 
popotamuses sticking their noses up, and the croco- 
diles, and those straw villages ” 

“Wait until you’ve seen the real thing further up. 
Still, once past Kosti, it’s better. You must get a lit- 
tle shooting.” 

“I don’t believe I shall have much heart for it,” 
she said. “The wild things are so tame, particularly 
the birds, that it seems cold-blooded to kill them — just 
for sport. As for the hippos, I wouldn’t shoot at one 
for worlds. They’re such big, harmless creatures.” 

“They do harm to the riverside crops.” 

“Well, the owners should guard them better. A 
friendly, vegetarian, sensible beast like the hippo! 
Don’t you remember that fascinating one we went to 


THE LURE 245 

see at the Cairo Zoo? The baby one that performed 
tricks ?” 

“You’re always on the side of the loser, Anne,” 
Peter said with amusement. “I shall have to be pa- 
thetic before you’re really devoted to me.” 

“Nonsense, I’m devoted now,” she said, with a 
flush. “I think you’re a dear, Peter.” 

“Yes, I’m a dear,” he replied. “I’m good-natured, 
and truthful, and easy to feed — but there’s no moon- 
shine halo about my head as there would be if I had 
a grievance.” 

“A grievance?” 

“Yes. You know ” he waved his hand vaguely. 

“If I were misunderstood, or about to be eaten by a 
crocodile, or persecuted by the Jews, or something of 
that sort.” 

“You silly old thing! You don’t need a halo.” 

“I don’t want one; it would be an uncomfortable 
appendage, and I shouldn’t wear it gracefully. Com- 
ing on deck, kiddy?” 

“Yes,” she said, getting to her feet. 

She had meant exactly what she said when she told 
Peter that she was glad to see him. He brought with 
him his own wholesome, kindly atmosphere. His 
presence in itself was a safeguard — against herself 
and against the disquieting elements which were about 
her. Yet there never was a person more unconscious 
of his merits than Peter. To have fallen below his 
own standard would have secured his instant self-con- 
demnation; yet that standard was not a low one, 
judged by the loose and comfortable codes of other 
men. To behave “decently” with Peter, meant the 
practice of most of the liveable Christian and pagan 
virtues — unselfishness, unflagging devotion to work, 
modesty to the point of self-effacement, and a cheer- 
ful and humorous spirit. Anne realized all this when 


246 


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she thought about him, and yet, as he had said, she 
set him on no pedestal. There was no god or hero 
about him. He had none of the personal magnetism, 
the intense individualism of Goss. She would have 
shrunk from comparison of the two men as a dis- 
loyalty to her husband, but the fact that she shrank 
proved that she feared to put them side by side in her 
mind. 

They were to wood that day at Abu Zeid, and the 
two men decided at lunch that they would go ashore 
again with their respective shikaris to try their luck 
for an hour or so. Anne again declined to accompany 
them ; she thought that very likely her presence might 
hamper the men. She watched them go off after 
lunch from the side of the boat, and then decided that 
she would take a siesta in her cabin before going on 
shore to explore the village of straw tukls which lay 
on the summit of a rise to the left, surrounded by 
trees. 

Just as she was on the point of entering her cabin, 
however, she glanced down the river, and saw a big 
steamer approaching them. It must be the Candace , 
the Government boat of which her husband had 
spoken. She waited to see it steam on up the bend of 
the river and out of sight, but after it had passed the 
Harriet , it slowed up and came to a standstill further 
on close to the bank. It was evident that the Govern- 
ment boat, too, was going to take wood on board ; and 
Anne, waiting no longer, went into her cabin and 
threw herself on the bed, to doze heavily, for the pre- 
vious night, like its predecessor, had been restless and 
broken, and she had the healthy woman’s need of 
sleep. 

Her slumber was so profound that it lasted long 
after the half-hour which she had intended to devote 
to rest. Even then she did not actually waken, but 


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247 


her sleep became a dream in which she was hammer- 
ing at the closed door which led into the paddle-box. 
The sound of the hammering persisted in her ears as 
the dream merged into waking consciousness. Tap- 
tap, tap-tap! 

She awoke with a start. She was not mistaken. 

There was a tapping at her cabin door. 

She called out “Come in!” but the door did not 
open, though the knocking continued. 

She arose sleepily, and going to the door, threw it 
open impatiently, expecting to see Ibrahim or one of 
his assistants. 

It was Austin, his mouth twitching, his weak, light 
eyes filled with fear. 

“What is it?” she asked. 

He laid a hand on her sleeve and spoke with a su- 
preme effort. 

“Come — mother is ill. I heard her cry out. She 
didn’t know I came in. She was on her bed. She is 
hurt.” 

Anne pushed him aside and went before him along 
the length of deck which separated her cabin from 
that of Mrs. Goss. The door stood open, and with- 
out knocking, she went in. 

Mrs. Goss lay on her camp-bed, her eyes shut. Her 
skin was always yellowish, but now her pallor was 
corpse-like and perspiration was making her forehead 
wet as though water had been poured on it. Her 
hands were clenched. 

At Anne’s entry, she opened her eyes. 

“Why have you come?” she asked, in a whispering 
voice. 

“Austin came for me. You are ill! What can I 
do? You are in pain!” 

“It is nothing . . . more than usual. I forgot to 
lock the door. Sometimes the pain is worse than at 


THE LURE 


248 

others. It is like a beast of prey . . . tearing me to 
pieces. It was kind of you to come. I did not know 
that he had noticed. . . . But please go, I shall be 
better soon.” 

“Surely, surely you take something when you are 
like this . . . medicine, bromide, something said 
Anne. “It can’t be right for you to suffer. Would 
a cup of hot tea be any good? Ibrahim could get one 
at once. And we have a medicine-chest with lots of 
things in it.” 

What was almost a smile crossed the face of the 
tortured woman on the bed. 

“No, nothing. I could take some drugs, if I chose; 
but I will not — yet. I hate opiates. I am afraid of 
beginning them. I must not give in — yet.” 

“Surely you should ” 

“No, no,” cried Mrs. Goss, with a note of despera- 
tion. “Please leave me. You are kind, but I would 
rather be alone. It is nothing unusual; it is only 
natural. It will pass presently.” 

Seeing that her presence did no good, Anne with- 
drew again. But her eyes told her that this suffering 
was not ordinary, and that the woman was seriously 
ill. Surely it was her duty to do something. She 
gazed up the river at the white Government boat, still 
tethered to the bank between its two nuggurs. Then 
she suddenly remembered what her husband had said 
about Sir Andrew Bainton being on board. If this 
really were the Candace he might be induced to come 
over. She was certain that something immediate 
should be done, some step taken. She did not wait to 
consider. The Government boat was already getting 
up steam, she might be leaving at any moment. Anne 
seized her sunshade without waiting to fetch a hat, 
went down-stairs, picked her way through the litter 
and sheep on the nuggur, crossed the plank, and ran 


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249 


along the uneven shore towards the bigger boat. The 
heat was sweltering, but she feared that she might 
miss her opportunity if she delayed. 

The gangway was still up to the bank. She gained 
it, crossed the attendant nuggur, and in a few mo- 
ments was upon the white passenger deck of the Can- 
dace, brushing past an astonished engineer, and some 
Sudanese squatting at the foot of the companion 
ladder. 

A tall Englishman in khaki was smoking by the 
taffrail, and chatting to an Egyptian officer in a fez. 
He glanced at her, astonished. Anne went up to 
him. 

“Excuse me,” she said, as he lifted his sun-helmet, 
“Eve come over from the Hurriet to ask if by any 
chance you have a doctor on board. The men of our 
party are on shore, shooting, and a lady has been 
taken ill.” 

“Isn’t it Mrs. Host? I heard your party was up 
here. My name in Damar. A doctor? We happen 
to have Sir Andrew Bainton himself on board; I’m 
sure he would go over with you, if you would wait 
a moment while I hunt him up. It’s nothing serious, 
I hope?” 

“I really don’t know. It’s Mrs. Huntly Goss. She 
absolutely refuses to take anything; but she seems to 
be in great pain. I feel certain that she should be 
treated.” 

“It doesn’t do to trifle with illness up here, where 
you may go a long way without striking a doctor. 
I’m sure Sir Andrew will come. Ya Mahommed ! 
Hatt kursi!” 

An Arab servant same running with a chair, and 
Anne seated herself on it while she waited. She had 
heard her husband mention Major Damar as a friend 
of his. Every one knows every one else in the Sudan. 


250 


THE LURE 


He returned in a moment followed by a broad- 
shouldered, stout, clean-shaven man. 

“Sir Andrew Bainton — Mrs. Host. If there's any- 
thing you need, Mrs. Host, don’t hesitate to send over 
for it. We shan’t be going yet.” 

She thanked him. Sir Andrew said he would come 
at once. “Allow me to say,” he observed caustically, 
“that you should know better than to be out in this 
sun with no further protection than a silk sunshade.” 

“I hadn’t time to get my hat,” replied Anne, 
humbly. 

Sir Andrew made no further comment, but pre- 
ceded her in a most leisurely manner down the com- 
panion ladder. 

Once at the bottom, he turned to extend a helping 
hand. 

“There is always time to take precautions,” he re- 
marked in a judicial manner. 

They reached the Harriet at last, and made their 
way to the cabin deck. 

“Mrs. Goss hasn’t any idea that I’m bringing you,” 
said Anne, outside the cabin door. “I hardly think 
I’d better go in — she is sensitive about being ill, and 
my presence might irritate her, as well as being use- 
less. I will wait for you outside.” 

“You are more sensible than most women,” Sir 
Andrew returned. “I dare say I can explain who I 

_ ft 

am. 

Anne waited aft, bidding Ibrahim bring whisky 
and soda in readiness for the moment when Sir An- 
drew should emerge. Austin was not visible; she 
learnt afterwards that he was in his mother’s cabin, 
refusing with the unreasoning devotion of a faithful 
dog to leave her for an instant. 

Sir Andrew came out after about ten minutes or a 
quarter of an hour. Anne rose to meet him. He re- 


THE LURE 


251 


fused the refreshment she had prepared, "however, and 
suggested brusquely that she should walk back with 
him as far as the Candace . 

“Well,” he said, as they made their way along the 
beaten path through the browned and coarsened grass, 
“I’ve persuaded Mrs. Goss to submit to a small injec- 
tion of morphia. She could have taken a dose of 
morphia herself, but it seems she has a strong objec- 
tion to having recourse to drugs yet. She's a plucky 
woman.” 

“Why do you say yet?” asked Anne. “Is it really 
serious ?” 

“Because, my dear lady, she is slowly dying. There 
is no doubt but that the pain will become more and 
more severe. It is a case of intra-abdominal carcino- 
ma — internal cancer, in other words.” 

“But can't she be operated upon?” 

“When a cancer growth is situated in vital parts it 
is inoperable. No, I'm afraid there is no hope of re- 
covery whatsoever. She has seen a German specialist 
in Berlin, who has absolutely the last word in case of 
cancer, and he told her much the same as I am telling 
you. But I think it would be advisable, as I have 
been saying to Mrs. Goss herself, in this stage of a 
painful disease, to give in and take morphia more fre- 
quently. It is not good for her, when the pain is as 
acute as it is to-day, to refuse the alleviating means 
which are at hand. If you have any influence with 
her, see if you cannot persuade her to follow my ad- 
vice. But she is a woman of singular force of char- 
acter, I should say, and it will be difficult to induce 
her to give in if she has made up her mind to dispense 
with analgesics.” 

He bade her good-by at the gangway of the Can- 
dace with cordiality, brushing aside her thanks. 

Soon afterwards, she saw the Government boat put 


252 


THE LURE 


off from the shore, and steam on up-stream. In the 
meantime Anne had opened Mrs. Goss’s cabin door 
very gently, to see that she was in a heavy sleep, the 
result, no doubt, of the soothing influence of the in- 
jection. Austin sat watching by the side of the bed, 
though the intense heat had turned the atmosphere 
of the small cabin into that of a forcing-house. 

Anne had food for thought. Why had Goss told 
her that his wife’s illness was hysteria? What reason 
could he have had for concealing the truth? The 
more she considered it, the more puzzled she became. 

For her lack of sympathy with the woman who 
slept an exhausted and artificial sleep in the cabin 
near by, she could only feel keen remorse. How 
could she have been so blinded? At last she under- 
stood. She could only wonder at the super-human 
force of will that the sick woman had shown. An 
endeavor to conceal suffering had probably been re- 
sponsible for much of her eccentricity of manner. 
And her ill-health was delusion , Goss had said. 

He must have known the verdict of the specialists. 
Mrs. Goss could have had no reason for hiding it 
from him. Then why, why in Heaven’s name, had he 
told her, Anne, that his wife’s illness was chiefly hal- 
lucination? His words echoed in her brain — 

“Delusions about her health, delusions about her 
son, delusions about me. . . .” 

“Why?” she asked herself, and again, “Why?” 


CHAPTER VII 


A NNE did not think it necessary to inform Goss 
of his wife’s attack. Mrs. Goss appeared at 
dinner, looking worn-out and dark-eyed; but 
Anne thought that it would be better for Goss to 
learn of the afternoon’s happenings from his wife’s 
own lips, if she wished to tell him. She contented 
herself with knocking at Mrs. Goss’s cabin before she 
went to bed, to ask her if she felt better. 

“I hope you will forgive me for calling Sir An- 
drew,” she added. “But we may not see a doctor for 
weeks, and I felt anxious about you.” 

“It was unnecessary — but you could not know 
that,” was the answer. “It was kind of you to take 
the trouble.” 

“I want you to promise to call me in if you feel ill 
again,” persisted Anne. “Please, please do. I am 
just next door, and a rap against the partition would 
bring me in at once.” 

“It would do no good, thank you very much.” 

“I know it would be of no actual good, but I might 
be able to make you as comfortable as could be under 
the circumstances, and get you anything you needed. 
It isn’t right for you to be alone when you are so ill.” 

“You are very kind,” Mrs. Goss repeated, her eyes 
softening a little at Anne’s evident anxiety. “But — I 
should be more grateful if — when I am like that — if 
you would just keep an eye upon Austin. I can get 
on perfectly well alone. This morning wasn’t any- 
thing out of the ordinary.” 

253 


254 


THE LURE 


“You poor thing!” exclaimed Anne, impulsively. 
“Why didn’t you tell me before — I mean more fully. 
Of course I will look after Austin.” 

“And please do not say anything to the others — to 
my husband — about to-day. It would not interest 
him.” 

“But — does he realize how seriously ill you are?” 
Anne asked quickly. 

“Yes, he knows. But it annoys him to think of it; 
to have the actual details before him.” 

“Surely ” Anne began, but checked herself. 

She was going to end her sentence : “surely you mis- 
read him, misjudge him.” Then it occurred to her 
that to say so to his wife, under such circumstances, 
was almost ridiculous. 

She paused a moment, outside. The twin peaks of 
Jebelein, the Two Mountains, with a range of lesser 
satellites, were silhouetted in blue-gray and blue-green 
against the ivoried sky, flat in tint, ghostly and beau- 
tiful, like the dream of a Japanese artist. The moon- 
light flooded the deck. But not even the etherealized 
calm of the African night could bring peace to her 
troubled spirit. 

The next morning found the Hurriet well on her 
way to Renk. Before breakfast, Anne saw two hip- 
poppotami standing in the reeds upon the bank, a 
mother and daughter, pink-nosed, hideous and un- 
afraid. She did not summon any one, for fear that 
the rifles would be produced. Further on she espied 
some five or six disporting themselves in the water up 
a little khor, their black snouts and flat skulls show- 
ing just above the surface. A few dripping heads 
were lifted in curiosity as the steamer approached, 
then, hey presto! they had disappeared beneath the 
river. 


THE LURE 


25 5 


Later in the morning a shikari pointed out a large 
herd of waterbuck away on the grassy and marshy 
plain on the port side of the vessel. They were al- 
ready moving and distant on the horizon by the time 
that Goss had decided to stop the boat and get a shot 
at them. Peter refused to go — he had shot plenty in 
his time, and had no wish to add to his collection of 
heads merely for the lust of killing the beautiful 
antlered beasts which were faintly visible against the 
sky-line. 

So he and Anne were borne ashore on the shoulders 
of the bahari to amuse themselves in less blood-thirsty 
ways. It was cotton soil, and the rank grass had been 
burnt by the natives, which gave the already sun-dried 
place a look of further desolation. In spite of all, the 
morning-glories twined themselves and their dawn- 
colored blossoms in and out of the thorny trees. Peter 
showed Anne the spoor left on the ash-like soil by the 
slender hoof of a gazelle in search of water, and fur- 
ther on the deep imprint left by a hippo, sun-baked 
into permanent form till the rains should destroy it. 
He showed her the arak shrub, a small tree of gray- 
ish wood which the Sudanese utilize in order to clean 
their teeth, cutting it into little sticks and chewing the 
end till it is frayed into a brush. Every detail in this 
apparently featureless country meant something to 
him. The long periods of solitude during which his 
only study had been the moods of Nature; the silent, 
significant events in the life of beast, bird, reptile or 
insect, each warring against each, had bred in him 
a habit of noticing, until his power of observation 
was almost as keen as that of a native. 

Presently, to Anne’s delight, some Shilluk natives 
came up, tall, gaunt, black spectres of men, draped 
about with native cotton, their bare arms braceleted, 
their bare throats adorned with necklaces; spears 


THE LURE 


256 

longer than themselves in their hands. Peter bar- 
gained with one of them through an Arabic inter- 
preter — for they only knew or deigned to know the 
language of their tribe — for a thick bracelet of ivory 
which one man wore on his upper arm. The price, 
the warrior said, was five reals (ten shillings), and 
when the bargain was closed, he smeared his arm with 
greasy clay from the bank in order to take it off. 
Finding that it would not budge, he handed back the 
money with great dignity, and he and his frineds 
stalked off together. 

A shout from the boat made them glance to where 
the Hurriet lay sweltering in the gray-blue heat. 
Austin was gesticulating at the side. He wished to 
come to them, he called out, when they went nearer. 
Anne saw no reason why he should not do so, and 
the youth was accordingly borne over and set on dry 
land. He had evinced a worship for Peter ever since 
Captain Host had come on board and followed him 
with adoring, watery eyes. Anne noticed that he 
seemed more intelligent when talking to her husband 
than with any one else except his mother. 

He soon detached himself from them, moving about 
in his odd, childlike way; peering here, plucking a 
flower there, picking up with great glee the giant 
snail-shells which lay in the rushes close to the water’s 
edge, and making a cairn of them. 

Ten minutes afterwards Anne saw two figures in the 
distance ; it was Goss and his shikari returning for the 
second time empty-handed. The Hosts walked out 
across the burnt grass to meet him, leaving Austin 
busy with his snail-shells on the bank. 

“No luck!’’ Goss called out, as they got within ear- 
shot. “They got wind of us somehow, though we 
were to windward, and got clean away. It was use- 
less to follow them up.” 


THE LURE 


257 

“Better fortune next time, then,” said Peter, as 
they joined him and walked toward the ship. “You’re 
bound to get far better sport higher up.” The shikari, 
with the second rifle, walked on their right, a respect- 
ful yard behind. 

“What’s my wife doing?” asked Goss. “Who’s 
that?” 

He indicated the stooping figure of Austin. 

“Mrs. Goss is reading on the boat,” Anne replied. 
“That’s Austin, happily collecting snail-shells. He 
came ashore with us.” 

Goss gave a keen glance at the rushes ahead, where 
the young man was busy at his childish task. There 
was an instant’s silence. The sun beat down on them 
with the intensity of midday. The sky was gray with 
it, the air glassy with it. Peter’s white duck was 
glaringly white against the dull, hot shades of the 
sky and the blackened grass. 

They were within twenty yards of the shore and 
the somnolent river. Goss indicated the charred 
herbage. “You’ll get your skirt dirty in this stuff,” 
he remarked, suddenly. 

Somehow something abrupt in the remark startled 
her, though it was apposite enough. “It is already,” 
she said, looking down at herself. “I shall get it 
washed out.” 

What happened then she never knew. Goss stum- 
bled violently; there was a report, and a “Ya Allah!” 
from the shikari, and a still smoking rifle lay on the 
ground. 

“Damn you,” said Goss to the shikari under his 
breath, turning fiercely upon him. 

The shikari, a lithe, short Arab of negroid type, 
poured out a stream of Arabic. 

“You needn’t curse the man,” said Peter. “If he 
hadn’t knocked the rifle aside so quickly, you’d have 


THE LURE 


258 

fired in the direction of the boat — perhaps into Austin 
there. How on earth did it happen?” 

“I caught my foot in that confounded tuft of 
grass,” Goss answered. “And this burnt mess is so 
damned slippery. Sorry, Mrs. Host, for adjectives. 
I must have jerked the rifle up in the effort to save 
myself.” 

“It’s rather unsafe to keep your hand on the trig- 
ger, even when it’s carried in the usual way,” said 
Captain Host, dryly. “But all’s well that ends well — 
thanks to the quickness of your shikari.” 

They regained the boat and were carried through 
the shallow water on board again. Mrs. Goss was 
awaiting them and gazing from the side of the ship. 
She must have seen the little accident, but she made 
no reference to it whatsoever, nor did any one men- 
tion it during lunch. 

But afterwards, Peter said to Anne — 

“That might have been a nasty business with the 
rifle just now. They told me Goss was a pretty good 
shot; but that could have happened to no man in his 
senses. If he’s going to do things like that, I shall 
keep a respectful distance from him when we’re out 
together. I don’t want to make you a widow yet, 
kiddy.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


W ITH every knot that the steamer made, Africa 
showed her mysterious face more boldly ; the 
river banks became wilder, stranger, more 
tropical ; the scrub gave place to a tangle of trees and 
creepers. They hugged the shore, following the 
deeper channel, disturbing as they churned their way 
up-stream a multitude of gaudily colored birds, diving 
hawks, warblers, rollers, bitterns, pelicans, sunbirds 
and water-fowl of all species, who flew up from the 
reeds and river or in and out of the branches of the 
trees. Crocodiles moved slimily and lethargically into 
the water at their approach; hippopotami gazed at 
them from the banks or from the river, and then 
plunged out of sight. When they stopped to “wood,” 
tribesmen, Shilluk or Dinka according to the village, 
slender as laths and naked as they were born — even 
the loincloth was missing — came to stare at them. 
Their thin bodies were gray with mud and wood-ash, 
their hair matted or clipped into strange forms and 
adorned with plumes. Of metal bracelets and ear- 
rings they had plenty, and each skeleton of a man bore 
his spear. Such villages as the wayfarers explored 
were clean and sweet — each tukl containing little be- 
yond its bedstead ( angarib ) and a few pots for 
cooking. 

They stopped at Fashoda — or more properly Ko- 
dok, since the offensive word has been deleted from 
the map — and explored that sun-baked town with its 
streets of tukls; its sandy, unsheltered ways; its Shil- 
259 


26 o 


THE LURE 


luk warriors; its placid bulls doing the work of horse 
or baggage mule ; and its Government quarters, spick 
and span. Further up, they stopped for an instant at 
Lul, the Austrian riverside mission, where the good 
fathers labor to bring the seeds of cultivation among 
a naked people and on a naked soil, gleaning little but 
miscomprehension and fever for all their pains and 
devotion. Taufikia was reached the next day, buried 
in dom palms, beneath which a detachment of Sudan- 
ese soldiers were being inspected by a lean English 
officer. A wind hot as a furnace blast whistled off 
the shore and through the shivering palms, and Anne 
thought of the months which her husband had spent 
in districts far remoter and more desolate than this. 
Here at least they were a handful; he had often been 
entirely alone. 

What future could there be for these young Eng- 
lishmen, of gentle birth, sons of the best tradition of 
the race, after they had spent their vigorous years in 
this land of perpetual sun, miasma and isolation, far 
from the women of their own race, far from the lux- 
uries that Englishmen at home think indispensable ad- 
juncts to daily life? 

Goss voiced Anne’s thoughts to Captain Host that 
same morning. 

“It’s a pretty thankless sort of task,” he said, gaz- 
ing back at the English officer whose khaki figure and 
white helmet were still visible under the wind-blown 
dom palms as they steamed away from Taufikia up 
the river. “A rotten job!” 

“Why rotten?” 

“Well, what do they get out of it? What’s going 
to be the future of an ambitious man in the Sudan?” 

“Get out of it?” Captain Host repeated, smiling. 
“Not much — in the sense you mean. There’s only 
one plum — the Governor-General’s job. Suppose a 


THE LURE 


261 


man rises to be Governor of a province after years of 
work out here, which is the next best thing, he’s land- 
ed in a blind alley. He’s had all the Sudan has to 
offer him, and if he resigns and has ambitions at 
home, he may just as well step gracefully into his 
tomb. England has no niche for him anywhere, how- 
ever well he’s done out here.” 

“India?” Goss suggested. 

“India has her own good boys waiting for promo- 
tion. She’s her own officials. It’s the same with the 
Home Office. They’ve their own pet lambs. There’s 
no room for him at home either. He remains, how- 
ever capable he is, like Lot’s wife, a pillar of salt, gaz- 
ing backward at the best years of his life sweated 
away in the Sudan — in a wilderness of sand, swamp 
and niggers.” 

“And a nice little legacy of malaria, I suppose,” 
said Goss, crossing his legs and looking at Peter’s 
lean jaws and yellowed skin. Fever had left its 
traces there. 

“That’s not infrequent,” he admitted. “The Su- 
dan has been called a young man’s country. We have 
only had it just over a dozen years, and the young 
men have not had time to grow old. It is a young 
man’s country; it is a country where hard work, en- 
thusiasm, strength and personality are used and need- 
ed. Young men go out into distant provinces, exer- 
cise functions which are almost unique in their cath- 
olicity, and have an almost unprecedented amount of 
liberty and discretion — for the Sudan isn’t swaddled 
in red tape yet. They get a salary which enables 
them to spend eight or twelve weeks a year in Eng- 
land. They rarely save. They can’t marry unless 
they are stationed at Khartoum and can afford to send 
their wives home for six months out of the twelve. 
They are spending health, youth, strength and ener- 


262 


THE LURE 


gies in the service of the Anglo-Egyptian Government, 
keeping up the prestige of their nation at enormous 
odds, and bringing a certain amount of law, order 
and justice, tv) poor beggars who had been systemati- 
cally raided and bullied before and had got used to it.” 

“And their reward is the reward that virtue gets in 
the proverb,” said Goss, ironically. 

“Well, isn’t that something, after all?” 

“It wouldn’t satisfy me !” 

“Perhaps not. Yet there’s the satisfaction of a 
hard game decently played. We get to love the life 
for its own sake. I know men, due to retire, who 
have lost the wish to leave the country. It’s got to be 
part of them. They’ve taken it for better or for 
worse.” 

“And you?” said Goss, looking at Captain Host 
with the pity of the sane man for the fool. 

“I wouldn’t have back a year I’ve given to it, 
though I abuse the country and the life and the 
climate. 

Anne began to see her husband differently, or 
rather to experience a subtle change in her attitude 
towards him. The Peter who ruled the little common- 
wealth on the boat so quietly and unobtrusively; who, 
when there was a violent quarrel among the Sudan- 
ese on the nuggur, heard both sides and dealt out sum- 
mary justice to the prime offender, a turbulent spirit 
who had drawn his knife, by having him flogged at 
the next wooding station ; the Peter to whom the ver- 
satile and independent Goss was obliged to turn at 
every juncture for advice or help — was almost a new 
Peter to her. She had known him as the private indi- 
vidual, modest, diffident, simple-hearted ; here she saw 
him as ruler. 

On the other hand, she felt sometimes, in an inde- 


THE LURE 


263 

finable way, that Goss’s brilliance seemed often spu- 
rious, his attitude second-rate, beside her husband’s. 
Yet, so strong was the habit of servitude in her, and 
so plausible and magnetic the man’s personality, that 
she invariably dismissed the ideas as disloyal. If she 
did not allow Goss to make love to her, it was equally 
part of her illogical and loyal nature to leave him on 
his pedestal. She told herself that to be false to her 
old admiration of him was impossible. 

He perceived it, and played up to the part she had 
cast for him. He took delight in recalling the ghost 
of the romance he had himself discarded in a moment 
of superfluity. He found Anne tantalizingly attrac- 
tive. Not one woman in ten, he said to himself, could 
have resisted the temptation of blowing up the sparks 
of a never extinguished feeling during the idle bore- 
dom of tropical day after tropical day during which 
tete-a-tete conversations were frequent and inevi- 
table. 

He grew impatient of it, at last. He was not ac- 
customed to be so successfully kept at bay by a woman 
for whom he knew that he had a strong physical and 
mental attraction. A wall of defence had grown up 
about Anne, a wall which his philosophy of women 
pooh-poohed as fictional. To the man who is thor- 
oughly individualist, to the man who asks always, 
“What can I get from this?” other conceptions of life 
gradually become chimerical. Goss’s individualism 
was thorough. His egotism was logical in its entirety. 
And the egotist takes it for granted that every one 
else is an egotist too, with disguises of varying flimsi- 
ness, unless they are fools. Anne was no fool ; there- 
fore, he grew impatient with her for her unnecessary 
sacrifice of his inclinations — and, he took it, hers. 
Still he waited. His axiom when dealing with women 
was never to show oneself precipitate or eager. Neg- 


264 THE LURE 

lect was a better weapon than pursuit. It rarely 
failed. 

The day after they had stopped to wood at Khor 
Attar, they awoke to find themselves in the Bahr-el- 
Zeraf — the River of the Giraffe — off the route of the 
regular steamers at last. Here the trace of devastat- 
ing fires was everywhere, and at night the low horizon 
was yellow with leaping flames to east or west. There 
was something sinister, infernal, in the aspect of the 
place and its great silence. The water, Peter said, was 
thick with crocodiles, but they rarely showed them- 
selves. 

The grass was burnt, the soil cracked, the sunt 
trees with their scarlet trunks and the cassia trees 
were denuded of leaves. Here and there a green 
shoot showed that nature was slowly re-awakening in 
the desolate spot, and golden, sweet-scented cassia- 
bells hung on apparently lifeless twigs, for what the 
fires had spared the locusts had eaten, and crowds of 
these evil insects, red as blood, whirred upwards in 
clouds with a sound like heavy rain on broad foliage 
when they were disturbed by a landing party. The 
two men had a successful morning’s shooting, bring- 
ing down waterbuck, tiang and a white-eared cob. 

They were in the sudd district at last, for the chan- 
nel narrowed as they went further, and great stretches 
of sudd, waving grasses and reeds, made landing im- 
possible save where there was an occasional firm pro- 
montory. The game was plentiful. They no longer 
stopped for it, though herds of waterbuck, hartebeest, 
and tall giraffe were sighted again and again. 

A day and another day brought them further away 
from the main stream of the great river. The tem- 
perature fell, the sky was gray with mist, the atmos- 
phere damp, heavy, miasmic. 

Sudd, sudd, and nothing but sudd, a sea of grass, 


THE LURE 


265 

bending before each breath of wind, broken here and 
there by a great ant-hill rising like the back of an ele- 
phant from the monotonous green ; or here and there, 
where the ground was firmer, a solitary dom palm 
raised its head, accentuating by its presence the vast 
uniformity of the miles on miles of marshland. No 
prairie could be lonelier, no desert so hopeless. And 
at night, the flare of the distant fires, the flicker of the 
fireflies and the sound of crickets, night-flies, mos- 
quitoes and frogs, continuous and chant-like under- 
tones of a silence terrible and savage. 

“In three more days/’ Peter remarked to Goss, we 
should reach your advance party.” 

“You will be interested in the Papadopoulos, my 
two overseers,” said Goss, turning to Anne. “Angelo 
and Gabriel are their singularly inappropriate names. 
They have tried almost everything — everywhere, from 
mining in the Klondike to cow-punching in Mexico 
and a sweating tailoring shop in New York. They’ve 
made fortunes and lost them. But they always stick 
together. They’re not a pretty pair, but they’ve the 
merit of not being fastidious and having constitutions 
like iron. Few white men could stand this sort of 
thing long; but they can and will. They’re well paid, 
and will get a percentage of the profits, and the life 
is the sporting fight against odds which seems to ap- 
peal to their natures. Angelo begged from me one 
night in Alexandria, in such a picturesque way, that 
I invited him to dine with me, and afterward thanked 
my stars for it. I’ve rarely had a more entertaining 
meal.” 

“But are they honest?” Anne asked. 

“Sufficiently so to make them valuable.” 

“The value of the Greek to civilization is his mar- 
vellous adaptability and commercial enterprise,” said 
Peter, with that dry triteness which characterized his 


266 


THE LURE 


remarks when talking to Goss. His attitude towards 
the civilian somewhat grated upon Anne, sensitive as 
she was about the relation of one man to the other. 

“They are criminals,” said Mrs. Goss, breaking in 
with suddenness. “I saw these Papadopoulos. Ga- 
briel has the face of a murderer.” 

“He is not amiable-looking,” Goss admitted, lightly. 
“But I am no physiognomist like my wife.” 

That night Anne lay awake for some time. In 
spite of the net around her bed a mosquito had se- 
creted itself in the curtains, and though she relighted 
the candle time after time she was unable to discover 
the offender. A few minutes after she had extin- 
guished the light the malignant hum told her that the 
insect had only hidden himself and was as active as 
ever. Peter, after rousing himself a time or two and 
offering to assist, slept peacefully on, and finally, 
thoroughly awakened, she slipped on a long dressing- 
gown, wrapped a mosquito-veil completely over her 
head, and went out on the deck for a breath of fresher 
air. The water was inky black, and a pale light near 
the horizon miles away showed where the sea of papy- 
rus and cotton-reed met the sky. The air was hot and 
yet struck a chill by reason of its clammy dampness. 
The stars were hidden by a thick mantle of fog-like 
cloud. The chirping chorus of frogs and insects con- 
tinued without ceasing. Somewhere in the blackness 
near the boat a hippopotamus blew water from his 
nostrils with a snort and a cough. 

Anne leant on the taffrail looking out over this 
styx-like river. Surely this place would have inspired 
Dante to write another canto for his Inferno. 

Then she heard something which detached itself 
from the vast concert of minute sounds which make 
up the silence of the African night. It was a sigh, a 
human sigh, a sigh so profound and terrible that for 


THE LURE 


267 

a moment she felt a superstitious dread. Could it be 
one of the natives whose white sleeping forms were 
visible like corpses further aft on the deck? 

No, it was nearer than that. Then she saw that 
the cabin door behind her was ajar. It was Mrs. 
Goss’s. 

Another sigh. Anne remembered the obstinate re- 
fusal of this woman to take anything to ease the an- 
guish which racked her body, her defiance of the dis- 
ease that was gradually sapping her strength. She 
must be lying awake at this instant, perhaps enduring 
torture. 

Anne could stand it no longer. She went to the 
door and touching it lightly with her fingers, pushed 
it further open. “Are you awake, Mrs. Goss? I 
thought I heard you stirring?” 

“Yes, I’m awake. Why have you come?” 

“I’m afraid you’re in pain,” said Anne gently, not 
to be put off by any ungraciousness. 

“I am in pain every night.” 

“I wish you would take some morphia. Sir An- 
drew advised it.” 

“I don’t need it. I can bear this. It is not so bad 
as it was the other day. I hope I didn’t disturb you.” 

“I was awake already,” Anne answered. “I have 
been out on deck.” She waited an instant, and the 
woman on the bed turned restlessly, first on one side, 
then on the other. 

“Do let me give you a dose of morphia,” Anne 
pleaded. 

“No, no ... I don’t want it. . . .” She added 
after a moment, “I wonder if you would sit here a 
little while. I want to tell you something. I want 
to talk. I must talk. It is worse than the pain to lie 
here and think and think and keep silence.” 

“Of course I will stay,” replied Anne. She sat 


268 THE LURE 

down on the canvas stool beside the bed in the dark, 
wondering. 

“I wish I could see your face,” said the voice from 
the pillow beside her. “Then I could watch your 
thoughts.” 

“Shall I light the candle?” 

“No. Perhaps I couldn’t say what I am going to 
say if it were light. Can you hear if I speak very 
low?” 

“Perfectly well.” 

“It is about Huntly.” 

“Yes?” Anne waited, her heart beating somewhat 
faster. Did Mrs. Goss guess at the past ? 

The breath of the woman on the bed came and went 
noisily. She said nothing. 

“Don’t be afraid to tell me what you are thinking,” 
said Anne. 

“He hates Austin . . .” said the voice slowly, at 
length. “He never had patience with anything im- 
perfect, or ugly or maimed. You have heard him say 
that all fools ought to be put into a lethal chamber. 
You think he is only talking in his usual way when 
he speaks in that manner. But an idea is easily re- 
alizable with him when he has spoken it. He says 
things he doesn’t mean, but if it were convenient to 
mean them, he would have no more scruple in putting 
them into action than in speaking them. His brain is 
like that. When he was young, my first husband told 
me, he said extravagant things, and when they dared 
him, he was always ready to carry them out in a way 
that would have made the most reckless of them hesi- 
tate. It is that which makes women fall in love with 
him. His cold-blooded thoroughness, I mean. I can’t 
express myself, I never could — but I must make you 
understand ” 

There was a burning impatience in the whispering 


THE LURE 269 

voice, a vehement discontent with its own inability to 
put thought into adequate words. 

“I will try to understand,” said Anne. 

“Even when Austin was a child,” Mrs. Goss went 
on — and Anne could hear her restless fingers twist- 
ing the sheet, “and I had not given up the hope that 
he would be better — that it was mere backwardness, I 
could see the repulsion that the boy caused to Huntly. 
But he has gone further since then. ...” Her voice 
sank still lower : “He wants Austin to die.” 

“Oh! surely you are mistaken,” Anne cried, shocked 
out of composure. 

“Hush, they will hear us!” 

Both women listened, but there was no sound ex- 
cept the snorting and plashing of the hippopotamus 
that Anne had heard before outside. He must be very 
near to the boat, she thought. 

“He would like him to die,” Mrs. Goss repeated at 
length. “Austin is delicate — he may get malaria, en- 
teric or fever. If I were not here, do you think that 
Huntly would see that he takes quinine, like the rest 
of us? He wants to keep him up here — he wants the 
place to kill him.” 

These were real delusions, Anne thought, with a 
pang of pity, bred of a warped mother-love that had 
exaggerated fears and suspicions into the shape of a 
monster. Had any one but a dying woman, her im- 
agination distorted by pain, spoken such an idea, the 
accusation would have been laughable. 

“But, Mrs. Goss,” she said, soothingly, “you must 
be mistaken. Why, we are all going back together — 
we shall be in Khartoum in a fortnight or three weeks’ 
time at most! And as for malaria — why, Peter says 
he’s never seen so few mosquitoes about, and they 
are what give you malaria, you know. It’s not the 
worst time of year. And if you didn’t give Austin 


270 


THE LURE 


his quinine, I’d give him a tabloid myself — Peter 
doesn’t let me forget any day to take my dose! Be- 
sides, my husband wouldn’t have let me come up if it 
were as unhealthy as all that, and think of the dozens 
of tourists that go up every year to Gondokoro. 
Some one has been exaggerating the badness of the 
climate to you.” 

“But Austin is delicate.” 

“Well, why did you let him come?” Anne could 
not help retorting. “You could surely have left him 
in England.” 

“Huntly wished us to come. I did not suspect any- 
thing of this kind when I consented. I don’t think he 
had really thought it out at first. But now he has 
made up his mind. He intends to get rid of him. He 
told me this trip would do us both good. I consented 
to come. But gradually, I have read his mind. Since 
I have been ill it seems to me that I can often see 
thoughts. . . .” 

“How can you say such a thing?” Anne exclaimed. 
“Why, my dear Mrs. Goss, the very idea is absurd. I 
have noticed that Mr. Goss is sometimes irritated by 
your son, but as for your accusation — why, what 
earthly reason would he have? There’s no possible 
motive! You must try to think of things sanely. I 
know it must be difficult when you suffer so much 
pain — but don’t you see that you have let a fancy 
grow upon you until it has reached unnatural, wicked 
proportions.” 

After all, what use was there in reasoning? Anne 
thought to herself. This poor, pain-wracked, half- 
distraught creature was more likely to disbelieve her 
than believe. 

“You think I am insane,” Mrs. Goss replied, after 
a moment. 

“I think you have gradually got an insane idea into 


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271 

your head through over-anxiety/’ Anne responded, 
frankly. 

“But I know it is so, I know it, I know it!” Mrs. 
Goss insisted with a fierce intensity. 

“You are accusing your husband of intention to 
murder.” 

“It may come to that. But Huntly is very clever. 
He would rather that it happened — otherwise. By an 
accident. By causes that other people would think 
natural. He puts him constantly into harm’s way. 
You could see it yourself if you were not blinded by 
belief in him.” 

“But,” Anne reasoned desperately, still attempting 
to calm this disordered brain, “there is such an abso- 
lute lack of motive ! People never act without motive, 
Mr. Goss or any other man. He would never wan- 
tonly harm a living creature merely because he had 
no affection for it.” 

“There is a motive,” said Mrs. Goss. “Perhaps 
you will think me less crazy if I tell you that. Have 
you seen me insane in other ways? Am I talking 
insanely now?” 

“Well, what is the motive?” Anne said patiently, 
resolved to argue the lunacy away bit by bit. 

“I shall have to tell you something of my own life. 
I married young. My husband was an American 
actor, or rather an Irish-American, since he was only 
naturalized and not born an American citizen. He 
was at school at Dublin, and his greatest friend was 
Huntly. He worshipped Huntly. He always used 
to talk of Huntly to me as if he were a genius, a god. 
I met my husband on tour, and we were married in 
New York. Just a year afterwards, Huntly came 
to New York. He was young, and very good-looking, 
and a clever talker. Every one took him up. He 
had some wonderful scheme — I have forgotten what 


272 


THE LURE 


it was — connected with an opera syndicate. My hus- 
band, Norman, was proud of knowing him. He used 
to come to our house a great deal — and he did not 
scruple to make love to me. I was dazzled by him — 
all women are. Norman never suspected. He was 
glad we got on so well together. . . .” 

“Yes?" said Anne, biting her lips. 

“Well, unexpectedly, the only investment Norman 
ever made in his life turned out marvellously well. 
It was a mine in California. We jumped from living 
from hand to mouth into a fortune. It was a good 
thing, for Austin was just born, and what is enough 
for two to live on in a Bohemian way is not always 
enough for three. Then came Norman’s illness. As 
soon as he knew there was no hope he made arrange- 
ments, in his usual happy-go-lucky Irish way. His 
will went something like this. He left all his real and 
personal estate in trust to me for my lifetime, with 
reversion to Austin and his heirs. By his wish, 
Huntly was appointed trustee. In case of a re-mar- 
riage, my husband wrote, putting in the clause 'which 
I hope will take place,’ then one-third of the whole 
fortune was to be held in trust for myself and my 
second husband and our issue. The remaining two- 
thirds in the event of my death was to pass absolutely 
to Austin upon his reaching the age of twenty-five. 
But in the case that Austin should die before reaching 
the age of twenty-five, or afterwards, without issue, 
the whole should pass to me, or to my second husband 
and myself if I re-married. It is complicated, and 
I am not good at expressing myself clearly — but Nor- 
man meant by this will to arrange things so that 
neither Austin nor myself should suffer in the event 
of my re-marriage. He wanted me to re-marry. 

“I went back to England after his death, and settled 
in Kensington. In these days Huntly was almost 


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273 


unknown in England. His affairs went wrong in New 
York, and he followed me to England six months 
later, and proposed to me. I was in love with him; 
I agreed to marry him.” 

She paused for breath. 

“Go on,” said Anne. 

“Well,” said the voice from the darkness, in an 
agony of impatience. “Can’t you see the position now? 
I have had no children by my marriage to Huntly, and 
I am a dying woman. Austin alone , when I am dead , 
will stand between Huntly and fifty thousand pounds.” 

There was a short silence. Anne’s lips were dry, 
and she moistened them before she spoke again. 

“I don’t see why this will, if it is as you say, should 
justify you in making such a preposterous and fan- 
tastic charge against your husband. It makes a crim- 
inal of him. You are saying something terrible. You 
say you married him for love. Yet you can make 
such a vindictive and awful accusation ... of a man 
you loved.” 

“Mrs. Host — once you imagined me jealous. It 
made me laugh when I thought about it. Could you 
live with a man and know that never for a day during 
your married life he had been faithful to you, even 
in the time when he still troubled to keep the glamor 
alive — and still have a heart left to be jealous with? 
I was a jealous woman once. But one can torture no 
living thing beyond a certain point. Feeling goes. 
It went with me. I cannot remember now even that 
I loved him. I hate him. I hate him. I hate his 
soul. I hate his body. He is growing fat — have you 
noticed? The soul is creeping through. He is not 
evil — I should respect that, but he is selfish as never 
a man was selfish before. God! I loathe him.” 

“It is your hatred of him that makes you see such 
blackened things,” said Anne, with a shiver. She 


274 


THE LURE 


felt as though this woman’s violence of soul were 
physical violence. It hurt and frightened her. 

“It is not. I have told you that he stands to gain 
fifty thousand pounds. He is in money difficulties 
at the present moment. He needs money for this new 
scheme. He needs it if he is to appear an honest 
man. Fifty thousand pounds within the next six 
months would save him.” 

“But what proof have you that he is contemplat- 
ing anything as diabolic as getting rid of Austin?” 

“Proof? I know it. I suspected nothing at first. 
I thought him too much of a talker to mean action. 
I did not see where his egotism was leading him. He 
did not see it himself. I have watched the idea grow 
and grow in him. I suspected him first on the way 
up. There was an incident on the train . . . what 
good will it do to tell you? You will not believe it. 
And there have been many incidents since. When 
the rifle exploded the other day, for instance.” 

“That was pure accident.” 

“I know that it was not.” She spoke with utter 
certainty. “Austin knows too. He is frightened of 
Huntly now. He was never frightened before, though 
he was sulky, shy and stupid with him, as he always is 
with those who dislike him. Now he dreams of him, 
and wakes screaming. His instinct tells him what 
your reason refuses to tell you.” 

Again there was a silence, a long, long silence. The 
dank marsh wind with its odor of decaying weeds 
bore in at the open door the ceaseless honking of the 
frogs, the eternal undertone of murmuring insects, 
one prolonged and muted note of endless energy and 
miasmic life. Again the horror of the Cimmerian 
darkness and mystery of this night of fever took hold 
of Anne. She no longer felt capable of argument 
with the voice in the darkness. All things horrible 


THE LURE 


275 


seemed suddenly possible to her. She saw the universe 
as pitiless and malignant as it seemed to the dying 
woman. 

“Do you believe me at last?” said Mrs. Goss, rais- 
ing her voice as if she were frightened that Anne was 
slipping away in the gloom, without understanding 
or pity. 

“No, I do not,” Anne replied, with an effort. “But 
I am unhappy for you . . . because you increase your 
own misery.” 

“You think you are sorry for me?” 

Anne did not reply. 

Mrs. Goss laughed. 


CHAPTER IX 


«rir>HIS is Mr. Angelo Papadopoulo and his 
I brother, Mr. Gabriel Papadopoulo, Mrs. 

Host,’’ said Goss, introducing the two broth- 
ers. They had been invited to dine upon the Har- 
riet, which lay close to a rough landing-stage on the 
river. Further down-stream, its starboard beams 
crushing back the feathery-headed papyrus grass, a 
big nuggur lay like a shapeless water-monster in the 
starlight. This was the floating abode and offices of 
the pair; and when the Harriet, in all the compara- 
tive cleanliness of her white paint (for though the 
sun had peeled and blistered her, she looked a palace 
beside the clumsy nuggur), came to a standstill, and 
a boat was put off to the Abbas II, as a rusty legend 
in Arabic and English on the bows of the native boat 
discovered her name to be — Messieurs Gabriel and 
Angelo Papadopoulo were discovered to be at domes- 
tic ease in none too clean pyjamas, smoking the pipe 
of rest after labor, while a Sudani boy amused them 
by performing the danse da ventre to the accompani- 
ment of an empty petroleum can used as a tom-tom. 
They had not expected the advent of the Harriet just 
yet, and they had certainly not anticipated that ladies 
would be on board. They were enchanted at the in- 
vitation to dinner, and promised to be over in a quar- 
ter of an hour’s time in costumes worthy of the occa- 
sion. These proved to be somewhat crushed dress 
suits and pleated and embroidered shirts, the latter a 
little too small for the expansive bosom of Mr. Angelo 


THE LURE 


277 


Papadopoulo in one case, a little too voluminous for 
the narrow breast of Mr. Gabriel Papadopoulo in the 
other. But they were shaven, and consciously resplen- 
dent, and as they bowed over the hands of Mrs. Goss 
and Mrs. Host with great unction, they blossomed 
into smiles. The smile of Angelo was all sunshine, 
the smile of Gabriel was a grudging gleam. 

“This is an unexpected honor,” said Angelo. “We 
did not dare to hope for the presence of ladies !” He 
gazed more particularly at Anne, whose youth and 
good looks made his responsive heart beat faster. He 
was much the more fluent of the two ; his English was 
perfect though foreign in pronunciation, and his exu- 
berance of tongue seemed corroborated by his exuber- 
ance of body. He was extremely obese. Anne won- 
dered how, in this climate, he could keep on so much 
unmelted flesh. His pale face was very fat, his col- 
lar disappeared into a triple row of unhealthy-looking 
chins, and by his right eye was a large transparent 
pimple or small growth. His hair, plentiful and black, 
proclaimed his vigor; and his eyes, dark and twink- 
ling, and the perpetual smile beneath a small mous- 
tache upon his lips, that he found the world an ex- 
tremely agreeable place on the whole. 

Gabriel was the very antithesis of his brother. Lean, 
yellow, misanthropic-looking, the lower part of his 
face was concealed by a large black beard. He was 
as silent as his elder brother was garrulous. He 
smiled rarely, while Angelo, full of good humor, was 
constantly ready with his comfortable laugh. 

They dined in the mosquito-house so as to be rid 
of the stinging, singing^ millions who raged furiously 
together at the chance of human flesh. Angelo and 
Gabriel professed themselves impervious to the pests. 
At first they were bitten — but now, “we have lost the 
flavor,” as Angelo put it. “But you, fresh from the 


THE LURE 


278 

cold, and the white skins of the ladies — ah! — they re- 
joice when they smell that!” 

Anne had learnt during the last day or two to dis- 
tinguish the less virulent variety — the culex — from 
the deadly anophiline mosquito that transmits the ma- 
laria germ. But both ladies had protected themselves 
well by wearing long mosquito boots, gloves and veils, 
and were seldom bitten. 

The conversation was chiefly of crocodiles; the 
number of skins dried, the comparative quality of the 
various species; and the plentiful supply of reptiles 
in the adjacent khors. Only Angelo and his brother 
shot them; the Sudanese they had brought up from 
Khartoum with them busied themselves exclusively 
with skinning them, in drying and curing the skins 
and going through the preliminary dressing processes. 

“We shall have a large consignment of sample skins 
for you to take back with you,” said Gabriel to Goss, 
in French. His English was broken. 

“Isn’t it very lonely for you?” Anne asked Angelo, 
who was her neighbor. 

“It is not a fashionable riverside resort like your 
Maiden’ead, madame; but we have no time to feel 
the solitude. Ladies! alas, there are no ladies except 
the few Sudanese women who cook for us — you will 
see them to-morrow on the Abbas ; but I have a gui- 
tar; and a guitarro, madame, is a great solace to one 
who adores music as I. Ah! the heavenly comfort of 
music ! I have even played it to the crocodiles in the 
reserve, madame, and, believe me, they lift their lit- 
tle eyes to me as the beasts might have lifted their 
heads to Orpheus ! Ah, I grow to love my crocodiles ; 
they are my pets, my sweets. It is only the young ones 
that we capture and put into the reserve; for when 
they are a little bigger, their tender skin it make most 
beautiful soft handbag for the charming scented hand- 


THE LURE 


279 


kerchiefs of ladies in Paris and London. And a few 
females, the great big crocodiles’ mammas, for when 
their eggs are laid and hatched in the sun there is a 
big swarm of babies no bigger than lizards, to be fed 
and petted till they have come to the leather age — 
ha, ha !” 

He was intensely tickled at his own wit. 

“I will show you to-morrow, madame, if you do 
me the honor to let me conduct you. Then there is 
the drying place, which does not smell very beautiful, 
alas! and the storing shed. Oh, there is very much 
to see of interest.” 

“How do you get on with the people up here — 
with the natives?” asked Captain Host. “There’s a 
Nuer village a little further up-stream.’ r 

“Oh, they paddle down in their dug-out canoes and 
fetch the meat away. They give us durra in exchange. 
As naked as our father Adam! But they grow fat, 
these Nuers, on us, or rather on our crocodile meat. 
They will not work, but they rejoice to see the war 
made on their ancient enemy. Many a woman draw- 
ing water and plump little child has been the lunch 
of our friends the crocodiles in the khor beside the 
village. Ah yes, we are heroes to these poor simple 
peoples so black and so savage. Think how savage, 
Mrs. Host! They do not even know money. If to- 
morrow you were to give one an English shilling, 
he would look at it, and melt it, and beat it up into 
a bracelet or into a spear-head. He would look on it 
with scorn.” 

“It is rather nice to be as unsophisticated as that,” 
said Anne. “I hope you won’t inculcate other ideas 
into their brains, Mr. Papadopoulo.” 

“Brains ! Madame, they have no brains beneath their 
coiffures, which are like the head of the American toy 
called, I think, the Golliwog, is it not? But the hair 


28 o 


THE LURE 


of the Golliwog is black, and the hair of these people 
they make red with ochre and clay, as red as the ladies 
of Titian. They have as much brain as the Golliwog.” 

After the meal was finished, and the souls of the 
two Greek overseers had been lifted into a yet higher 
heaven by the champagne which accompanied it, Anne, 
Mrs. Goss and Austin went to the cabin deck below, 
leaving the men to discuss business matters and the 
all-important question of the eventual site. 

The two brothers were of the opinion that it would 
not be possible to better the site which they had now 
picked out for the first experimental factory. But 
Captain Host was bound to put before them the diffi- 
culties of isolation, and the consequent impossibility 
of Government protection in case of disagreement 
with the natives of the district. The Papadopoulos 
professed themselves unalarmed by this eventuality. 
They were under no fear of intervention from the 
Nuer and Dinka tribes, who were their most immedi- 
ate neighbors. The war on the crocodiles was a popu- 
lar one, and the profitable exchange of durra for meat 
was carried on with friendliness and satisfaction to 
both parties. 

The next morning Anne awoke early, and hurried 
to the side of the boat as soon as she had had her 
bath and was dressed in her coolest garments. Be- 
yond the landing-stage to which the Hurriet and her 
satellite were attached was a firm promontory of 
land, dotted over with ant-hills. It was entirely tree- 
less, but to the right and left of it the river ran up 
into two khors. One was thick with a forest of 
plumed papyrus grass, more than ten feet high; the 
other, a good deal less blocked in by the sudd owing 
to the protection of the promontory, was free from 
the tall reeds on one side, and a beaten path along it 


THE LURE 


281 


led to a rough shed, built of dried grass like a native 
tukl. This, Anne took to be the house for the stor- 
ing of the skins. 

The Abbas , further down the river, was already 
astir. A thick blue smoke from her galley proclaimed 
that breakfast was cooking. Anne saw a native wom- 
an washing garments at the side of the boat and heard 
distinctly the wail of a baby above the chatter and 
din. 

The sky was overcast no longer, and an unveiled 
sun burned already fiercely in the heat-gray sky, al- 
though it had not mounted high as yet. It would be 
a broiling day; already, when she looked, Anne saw 
that the thermometer registered ninety-one in the 
shade. By midday the mercury would have risen to 
one hundred and five or one hundred and six, perhaps 
even higher. It was not the bracing, invigorating sul- 
triness of Khartoum, but an atmosphere like that of a 
vapor bath, damp and steaming and intolerable. 

Presently she espied Angelo Papadopoulo on the 
bank. She guessed that his newly-washed shirt and 
gaudy blue tie had been donned in honor of their ar- 
rival. The short moustache, too, was twisted above 
the tier of chins with a dandified air of fashion. He 
wore a sash around his immense girth. 

He saw her immediately, and lifting his sun-helmet 
brought it to his heart in a profound bow, then came 
across to the landing-stage. 

“You are up early, madame,” he said, his fat face 
creasing with a smile. 

“It is too hot to sleep,” Anne replied. 

“Have you breakfasted yet?” 

“No — I shall not do so until eight — with the others. 
Have you?” 

“Half-an-hour ago. An excellent breakfast ! I will 
leave you to guess, madame, of what it consisted, my 


282 THE LURE 

breakfast — or rather of what the piece de resistance 
was composed.” 

“I’m quite unable to guess,” replied Anne, with a 
smile. In spite of the villainous look of the man, 
there was a childlike good humor about him which 
went far to nullify her first impression of repulsion. 

“It was an omelette!” 

“An omelette,” repeated Anne, puzzled. “With 
preserved eggs? You have no fowls up here?” 

“No, we have no fowls. Yet the eggs were fresh.” 

“They were birds’ eggs? Wild guinea-fowls’ 
eggs?” 

“No, madame. They were — crocodiles’ eggs!” 

“You don’t mean to say that you eat omelettes 
made of crocodiles’ eggs!” exclaimed Anne in abhor- 
rence. 

“But why not ? Their flavor is most delicate. They 
make a most excellent omelette. If you like, you shall 
have one for your breakfast. My cook shall make 
you a dish and bring it over — steaming hot.” 

“No — it would make me ill, I am sure,” said Anne 
with decision. “I couldn’t possibly touch one; thank 
you very much all the same.” 

Angelo Papadopoulo looked at his watch. 

“It is seven now,” he said, “and there is an hour 
to your breakfast. Will you not come and let me 
show you the things I promised last night to take 
you to see? Later on it will be too hot.” 

There was no sign of Peter, whom she had left in 
deep slumber, or of any other member of their party, 
so Anne consented. 

“You must not explore this place alone,” observed 
Angelo, “except this little piece of land before us, 
which is safe. I never myself go further inland with- 
out my gun, to shoot if necessary. Then I have no 
'fear. I never miss. I can shoot at a nut fifty yards 


THE LURE 283 

away and hit it. My brother is not quite as good, 
but almost.” 

“But your workmen, the Sudanese that you have 
up here — they go unarmed?” 

“They may carry spears or knives — we allow them 
that. But they have quicker eyes and ears than ours 
— they are accustomed to let their seven senses guard 
them. Not even quickness can always save them. 
Last week, a boy walked up the khor there,” he indi- 
cated the branch of swamp bordered with papyrus — 
“and he was careless. One of the crocodiles sunning 
on the bank managed to seize him as he passed, and 
dragged him into the water. There was no hope for 
him after that. Fortunately, I have rather more than 
enough hands for the work there is to do.” 

“Do you mean to say the poor boy was eaten alive,” 
cried Anne, horror-stricken, as they walked towards 
the thatched shed. 

“No — that is all fiction. He was eaten — yes; but 
not as people think. The crocodile pulls tfhe person 
into the water and drowns him, then eats him piece 
by piece. He does not swallow him whole.” 

“That is just as dreadful,” said Anne, shud- 
dering. 

“That khor over there is full of them half-a-mile 
up. It is a place where the wild animals, the ele- 
phants, the buffaloes, the buck and the gazelle — even 
sometimes the lion, come down to drink at night, for 
there is a sweet spring there. The crocodile waits in 
the papyrus by the brink near the muddy track, and 
snaps and drags at the smaller animals. Then the 
water is stained with blood, and the crocodile has a 
full stomach. I will take you there — you can see 
them when the sun is on the bank, basking in the heat 
— but you must never go alone, or too close. If you 
want to see him close, we will go to the reserve which 


284 


THE LURE 


is palisaded — up the smaller khor before us. In the 
other I have seen them sleeping on the bank in twen- 
ties at a time. The path leading to it is there, behind 
us.” He turned to indicate a track leading into the 
tall papyrus. “I call that khor the ‘Valley of Death.' 
It is a ‘Valley of Death' to the crocodile as well, now 
that we are here!” 

“They are horrible — these crocodiles,” said Anne. 
“I have been sorry for them up till now, but what 
you say destroys my pity.” 

They had reached the packing-house, and a curious 
smell, like that of dried fish mingled with the more 
acrid odor of a tannery, reached them. Within it were 
stacked the flattened and semi-prepared skins of the 
reptiles, one above the other in neat heaps. 

“I will not take you to the dressing-house or the 
skinning and drying place,” said Mr. Papadopoulo; 
“because the smell is too unpleasant. Fortunately, 
what wind there is to-day — and what a hot wind ! — is 
in the other direction. I am used to it, but it is not 
for the delicate nose of ladies.” 

The Sudanese workmen, half naked, looked amaz- 
edly at the Englishwoman in her white dress, and at 
the unusual splendor of Mr. Papadopoulo, who was 
not one of those who observe the niceties of dress 
without an audience. 

“And now,” continued Mr. Papadopoulo, walking 
along the browned track through the grassy patch 
which bordered the khor , “we will walk a little way 
to the reserve.” 

“How do you catch the crocodiles?” asked Anne. 

“With the babies it is easy. But the great big 
mamma crocodile, she is lassoed about her capacious 
jaws, and then trussed up — tight! I learnt many 
things in Mexico. It was in Mexico that I shot my 
first alligator. I have taught one or two of the Sudan- 


THE LURE 285 

ese boys here to throw a noose, and they are quick 
to learn anything that means dexterity.” 

Anne had to plead for a slower walk; the energy 
of Mr. Papadopoulo seemed inexhaustible in spite of 
the fact that copious perspiration trickled down his 
face in shining rivulets, and splashed onto his shirt 
drop by drop. The heat was the heat of a greenhouse, 
and made Anne feel limp already. 

Five minutes brought them to the part of the khor 
which Mr. Papadopoulo designated as “the reserve.” 
It was roughly but strongly palisaded in with thick 
branches of sunt , bound together lattice wise, and 
driven like stakes into the soil. It was so contrived 
that the stakes bowed inward at the top, making it 
impossible for the most ingenious captive to escape. 
This palisading was carried right across the water vvay 
of the khor at a spot where there seemed to be a 
natural ford, and again, higher up. Though the en- 
closure was a large one, there were not so many pris- 
oners, after all, but they were not a pleasant sight. 
On the muddy brink of the water lay some three gi- 
gantic female crocodiles, their horny bodies distended, 
their small, wicked eyes shut. Their ridged skins, 
greeny-gray, shading to brown and olive color, were 
caked with mud, their blunt snouts rested on the 
ground. They looked so lethargic, so foul, so terrible, 
that Anne was filled with disgust. There was also 
a good many half-grown and baby crocodiles. The 
half-grown reptiles, Papadopoulo told her, were 
doomed to die in a week or so. 

“And then: a cut made all down their tender- 
skinned side — to cut down the belly would be to ruin 
the skin; and he is peeled of his valuable part, and 
the rest of him gets carried away in the dug-outs up 
to the Nuer village and eaten.” 

The crocodiles looked singularly indifferent to their 


286 


THE LURE 


fate. Occasionally one slipped noiselessly into the 
water, or opened its wide jaws in what appeared to 
be a yawn. And on all — on the weed-grown, stagnant 
water, on the yellow grass and wait-a-bit thorn on 
the further bank, and on the muddy stretch of shore, 
the sun beat down fiercely, blindingly, paralyzingly ; 
so that the heat was reflected again from the dried 
and cracked mud path upon which they were walking. 
Anne could feel it even through her thick-soled shoot- 
ing boots. 

“And now, if you would like to see the other two 
sheds ?” He indicated two tukl-like erections be- 

yond. “It is only half-past seven.” 

“No, thank you,” said Anne, sickened at the mere 
idea. 

“Then shall we go back again and walk a little way 
up the other khorf It is cooler, and with me you are 
perfectly safe.” 

“Up the Valley of Death,” said Anne, with a smile. 
“Yes, I will go there with you if you have the time 
to take me and it is not far.” 

“It is not far, and I have always time for charming 
ladies — here we do not see so many that we are in 
danger of spending our time so agreeably often.” 

His small eyes above his vast cheeks were twinkling 
and ecstatic, his tone conveyed the intense pathos of 
the situation as it appeared to him. 

“When are you going down-river again, Mr. Papa- 
dopoulo?” asked Anne, inwardly amused. 

“Not till the rains, madame. We cannot dry the 
skins then, and this will be too like — excuse me — a 
wet hell. Then I shall return to Egypt — come to Eng- 
land, perhaps, to see Mr. Goss and the shareholders 
and make my report. We shall have a nice lot of 
skins by then. But the weeks of rain, they go quickly 
— ah, how quickly! and when they are over we shall 


THE LURE 


287 

return to this — ” he waved his hand comprehensively 
— “and no ladies! Ah, Mrs. Host, to a man of my 
temperament, to my simpatical nature, that means so 
much, so very much! . . . This is the way. If you 
permit, I will carry my rifle, so — and walk in front — 
the path is narrow and I shall see before me.” 

They were in the path that led to “the Valley of 
Death.” Green papyrus, plumed and silvery at the 
top, and brown and livid where the roots met the 
marshy soil, hemmed them in on either side, three 
or four feet above their heads. The rank, lush smell 
of water-weed and slime, the fierce light, slanting as 
yet, subdued by the tall papyrus heads to a warm 
green shade, and the steamy heat, almost suffocating, 
affected Anne strangely. It seemed to her that this 
was an evil place, a place haunted by sinister, foul 
and unnatural life. The wind, which was more like 
steam than the refreshing current of air we associate 
with the word, moved gently, caressingly, stealthily 
through the papyrus, sending long shudders and whis- 
pers through the sea of heads. There were rustlings 
too at the roots, as though living creatures, snakes, 
reptiles or wild animals, were stealing away, startled 
at the intrusion of human beings into their unholy 
sanctuary. 

Mr. Papadopoulo went in front, the unwieldy ap- 
pearance of his big body not interfering with the cat- 
like lightness of his walk. “The sun is not yet high,” 
he said to her over his shoulder; “when an hour has 
passed, this will be as hot as it is out in the open. 
It is not always so unbearable, but to-day I find my- 
self in a bath. I irrigate the soil upon which I walk 
— ha, ha!” He paused to wipe his brow with a bril- 
liantly-hued handkerchief, and then resumed his way. 

Fifteen minutes or thereabouts brought them sud- 
denly into the open. The scenery round about was 


288 


THE LURE 


the desolute, sun-stricken country to which Anne had 
grown accustomed further up, but in the foreground 
was one patch of vivid green. Four dom palms, with 
smaller palms of another species, and a big acacia 
tree, together with another shrub covered with white 
blossom, that Anne had never seen before, grew to- 
gether in a thick clump, making a sudden little Para- 
dise in the scorched and yellow wilderness. And the 
grass at their roots was luxurious and green, prob- 
ably on account of the constant moisture and the shade 
afforded by the foliage from the sun. The waterway, 
or khor, suddenly freed from weeds, formed itself 
into an exquisitely clear pool, so deep as to be almost 
black in appearance. It had absolutely no growth of 
any kind upon its surface, but its beauty was marred 
by a long stretch of muddy bank, and a wide track 
leading down to it, so clearly defined and well-trod- 
den as to have the appearaonce of being man-made. 
This path narrowed and disappeared into the long 
grass and scorched country beyond, and was deserted ; 
but the bank was lined with crocodiles, some eighteen 
of them, large and small, sunning themselves in a 
dreadful, inert drowsiness. Some were enormous. 
One, Anne thought, must be at least fourteen feet 
long from the end of his flail-like tail to his round 
snout. 

Suddenly Mr. Papadopoulo fired a shot into the 
midst of them. The whole contingent of saurian mon- 
sters plunged quickly down into the black water, leav- 
ing a thin dark trail where one of their number had 
been wounded. 

“Did you kill one?” asked Anne, feeling a nameless 
sensation of terror gripping her throat. 

“No, I just wounded one in the foot so as to frighten 
them in. They scarcely know fear, those ugly beasts ! 
Now, observe, madame. You see that path? That is 
where the animals come down to drink at night-time. 


THE LURE 


289 

See ! those deep, pit-like marks here and there, that is 
where the foot of an elephant has sunk in during the 
rainy weather. They come in herds to drink. And 
then! observe, madame, that is the spoor of a lion. 
Ah! if the crocodile were not so numerous and dar- 
ing, your husband and Mr. Goss could shoot to-night 
their lion or their elephant. The other beasts, they 
are numerous, too. The animal they call Mrs. Gray, 
with his fine antlers — he comes often. I have shot 
him — the laws only permit that one shoot the single 
specimen, alas! This water they love with good rea- 
son. It is an excellent water, I often have my boys 
get some for us to drink ; it is purer and sweeter than 
the river water. ,, 

“What a wonderful place!” said Anne, controlling 
her impulse to turn and run away from it. In spite 
of its beauty, it was stamped somehow with the effigy 
of death. “And that tree in blossom, how pretty!” 
she added, for Mr. Papadopoulo stood in expectant 
complacence, again wiping his brow and neck. 

“I will get you some, madame. Only do not move 
from the path, I beg you.” 

He moved towards the green patch, and Anne no- 
ticed that he avoided the longer grass, and that his 
boots sank several inches into the wet surface as he 
approached the tree. He snapped off a branch or 
two of it, then returned to her, presenting the bouquet 
with a bow. 

She thanked him, conscious that he had run more 
danger than she had anticipated in getting them. The 
flowers were white and delicate, like enlarged may- 
blossoms, but the stamens were very long, and of a 
curious pink color, the pink of the ribs of a mushroom. 

“And now to go back,” said Mr. Papadopoulo re- 
gretfully. “It will grow late for your breakfast, and 
you will be angry with me.” 


CHAPTER X 


G OSS and Peter, Anne found, were to spend their 
morning, or part of it, in going over the vari- 
ous sheds, and running through the reports of 
the Papadopoulos. The afternoon was to be employed 
in rowing some miles down-stream to see an alterna- 
tive site, which the two overseers thought might be 
better adapted for a large and permanent farm than 
the site they had themselves selected here. This expe- 
dition they would combine with an elephant shoot if 
they were fortunate enough to come across the herd 
which the Greeks assured them was in the vicinity. 

“It will be frightfully dull for you, Mrs. Host, I’m 
afraid,” said Goss. 

“Your wife and I will explore the Abbas , and read 
and eat and sleep, and I dare say the time will pass 
somehow,” replied Anne. Mrs. Goss was not present 
at breakfast; she sent word to say that she needed 
none. Anne feared that this meant that she had had 
another white night. 

Peter came into their cabin after breakfast just 
as Anne was exchanging her blouse for a still thinner 
one. 

“Would you like to go on shore with us again, 
kiddy?” 

“No. I was nearly melted this morning when I 
went over the place with Angelo Papadopoulo. And 
I don’t like the crocodiles. They are gruesome. They 
make me feel creepy.” 

“Fanciful old lady!” 


290 


THE LURE 


291 

‘The whole place is horrible, I think. I wish we 
were going on at once.” 

“We shall to-morrow, I expect. The reis doesn’t 
know the channel well, so we can only travel by day- 
light. It’s exceptionally hot. I should take a little 
extra quinine at intervals, Anne; this isn’t a particu- 
larly salubrious spot, and I don’t want you to get laid 
up with fever.” 

“I’m as fit as anything. But I will, all the same, 
as a precaution.” 

“You’d better let me make inquiries before you 
go exploring the Abbas. I hear they’ve a baby ill, 
and Heaven only knows of what disease.” 

“The Papadopoulos said nothing about it.” 

“I will find out for myself. All isn’t exactly peace 
and joy on board. One of the native women — a girl 
of Baggara extraction from Omdurman — came over 
to me this morning from the Abbas with a long- 
winded complaint. It appears that there is rivalry 
between the two brothers about her, and that last 
week they had a quarrel in which knives were pro- 
duced. Angelo has threatened her life, she says, and 
she wants us to take her back to Khartoum on our 
nuggur.” 

“What, that smiling, good-tempered Angelo ! What 
a horrid story, Peter!” 

“Oh, they’re not an attractive pair, one can see that 
at a glance. The Greek at his worst, I mean the ex- 
patriated, mongrel Greek who is the flotsam and jet- 
sam of the Levant, is not usually a person of high 
principles. These two suit Goss’s purpose, no doubt. 
But even the self-respecting native looks down on 
white men of this type — men who have adopted the 
native life — and none of the native virtues with it.” 

“Does Mr. Goss know of this?” 

“The affair with the woman? No, not yet. He 


292 


THE LURE 


told me that Angelo, whom he considers the more 
capable of the two, had hinted to him that his broth- 
er’s help was not necessary and that he could manage 
quite well alone. He isn’t likely to hear of it except 
through me, as he speaks no Arabic, and it is not likely 
that either brother will come to him about it.” 

“But the girl — poor thing! Can’t you get her 
away?” 

“My darling, ready-to-take-up-the-cudgels wife! I 
expect if the truth is known, she’s well able to look 
after herself. It’s no affair of mine. I can’t kidnap 
one of their cooks. Besides, the woman on our nug- 
gur would probably object violently at the introduc- 
tion of a second, and I should have nothing but quar- 
rels to settle all the way back to Khartoum. I’m 
sorry, but nothing can be done.” 

“What a terrible place this is!” said Anne, with a 
shudder. “I wish we were back again in Khartoum.” 
Peter kissed her. “Are you tired of your savage 
Africa already?” 

“No, it’s not that . . . exactly. But there seems so 
much evil . . . everything fighting against and eat- 
ing up everything else.” 

“Why, Anne, the crocodiles have got on your 
nerves !” 

“I suppose so,” she answered, forcing a smile. “But 
Nature is cruel, and it seems to me that men are more 
cruel still.” 

“I wish I hadn’t told you about that Sudanese 
woman. She’s able to look after herself successfully 
I am sure, so don’t worry. They are accustomed to 
brutality, I’m afraid.” 

“And the poor little baby ill ; in this spot ! Couldn’t 
I take it over something from our medicine chest?” 

“I’m going to do that myself this morning, as soon 
as I’ve seen it and diagnosed its illness, poor little 


THE LURE 


293 


beggar. One gets used to amateur doctoring in the 
wilds. I once kept and nursed and fed a kid of six 
weeks old for a whole two months. We picked him 
up marching across country during some trouble in 
Southern Kordofan. Heaven only knows his history 
— perhaps his mother and father had been killed or 
carried off. I kept him in my own tent — we weren’t in 
very friendly territory, till we struck a big village in 
a safe bit of country, and then I handed him over with 
a good deal of backshish to a motherly woman. I 
give you my word, I actually missed that fat black 
imp. He used to claw hold of my thumb and suck it 
in a most confiding way. He was a jolly little chap. 
We fed him on goat’s milk.” 

“Poor little pickaninny !” said Anne, her eyes 
moistening at the thought of this husband of hers 
playing with a forlorn and helpless little black baby 
in the wilds. 

She went as soon as the men had left the boat to 
see what she could do for Mrs. Goss, but found that 
she was in a heavy sleep. The faint smell of lauda- 
num was in the air, and Anne could only surmise at 
the intensity of the pain which had driven this iron- 
willed woman to a relief which she so obstinately re- 
fused as a rule. Austin, his mother had sent a mes- 
sage while they were at breakfast, was not to go with 
the men, but to remain on board, and Anne discovered 
him below, gazing intently at the silent engines that 
propelled the paddle-wheel. She induced him to come 
up again with her, mindful of her promise to keep an 
eye upon him. She had discovered that he had a 
childish love of stories — such as one tells to the very 
young, and she racked her brains to keep him amused 
with tale and legend until her invention and memory 
were exhausted. Then to her relief, she saw that 
Austin, overcome with the heat, was drowsing in his 


294 THE LURE 

lounge chair, and she gave herself up to reading and 
peace. , 

Peter returned alone, with the information that he 
had left Goss on the nuggur in consultation with the 
two overseers on matters which were not his concern. 
He had seen the baby, which was suffering from weak- 
liness and fits more than from any specified illness, so 
that there was no reason why Anne should not walk 
across there that afternoon if she felt inclined to do 
so. “Though/’ he added, “it’s not remarkable for 
cleanliness.” 

Anne went in again to see Mrs. Goss before lunch, 
but found her still motionless; and wondering, she 
decided not to rouse her. She could have food directly 
she awakened. The drawn face upon the pillow filled 
Anne with compassion. 

At lunch Goss, who returned late, asked where his 
wife was. Anne told him that she was still sleeping. 
“She has probably had a bad night,” she said. “I did 
not like to disturb her.” 

“It will do her good to rest,” Goss replied briefly. 
His eyes were more sombre than usual, the lines and 
puffiness in his face more marked. Anne thought that 
he looked as if he, too, would be the better for addi- 
tional sleep; he had the look of a man whose eyelids 
have not closed for a long time. He drank several 
whisky-and-sodas at lunch. 

“You couldn’t keep that up long, if you lived out 
here,” said Captain Host as Ibrahim came up with the 
third. “It would kill you.” His own drink till after 
sundown was that innocuous temperance beverage 
known as portogan or orangeade. 

“Thank God I don’t,” returned Huntly Goss. “It’s 
a hole of a place.” 

“It’s not a little heaven. But this time of year it’s 
endurable. And you’ve not had much to grumble at, 


THE LURE 


295 

Goss; we’ve had cool weather up till to-day, remark- 
ably few mosquitoes, and some good shooting.” 

Goss put down his glass unsmilingly, in silence. 

Anne, always vividly conscious that the two jarred 
on one another, put in a trivial remark that turned 
the conversation. 

The men were not to start till three, thus giving 
them time for a siesta during the great heat of the 
day. Peter was called away at the close of luncheon, 
however, by a message brought him by his servant. 
A man on the Abbas was suffering from a poisoned 
foot, could Host Bey give him something to cure it ?” 

“That’s the worst of beginning to give medicine,” 
Peter said to Anne, with a good nature which was 
the more remarkable because he did not care for giv- 
ing up the siesta so necessary in the intense heat. 
“Once you get a reputation for being a bit of a hakim, 
you’re done for. I suppose I must go round and have 
a look at the foot, and take some rough-and-ready 
remedies. I shall be back by the time that Goss is 
ready to start.” 

He departed, armed with medicaments, and when 
Anne went to see Mrs. Goss, she found her awake at 
last, but flushed and heavy-lidded. 

“Are you still in pain?” Anne asked. 

“No ... it isn’t that; but I think I have a touch 
of fever.” She spoke with languidness. “My head 
feels very curious.” 

“Have you taken any food ?” 

“No, I don’t want any food.” 

“Pm sure it isn’t good for you to take absolutely 
nothing. They’ve got a goat on the nuggur — I will 
send Ibrahim over to get some of its milk for you. 
The Papadopoulos will let us have some. You must 
drink that.” 

“I couldn’t.” 


2 96 THE LURE 

“Wait till it comes, and then see. When did you 
take quinine last?” 

“Yesterday.” 

“Then take these tabloids now. Here is some 
water.” 

Mrs. Goss took the glass and swallowed the white 
globules in a kind of dazed obedience. Anne rear- 
ranged the hot pillows behind the sick woman’s head. 
She felt more anxious than she cared to admit, even 
to herself. 

“Do you think I am going to be ill?” 

“Oh, no,” said Anne reassuringly. 

Mrs. Goss allowed her to perform the good offices 
which made her more comfortable. 

“I wish that we were going away from this place,” 
she said. “I hate it. There is something I cannot 
understand about it. I am frightened lest I shall die 
here, and there will be no one to look after Austin.” 

“Nonsense,” replied Anne lightly. “Why, every 
one gets a touch of fever now and then — especially 
when it’s hot as this. My husband shall come in to 
look at you when he returns; he is doing some ama- 
teur doctoring now on the Abbas. He’s accustomed 
to fever, he will have you right in no time. And I 
will look after Austin while you are laid up. I won’t 
let him out of my sight if I can help it.” 

“Will you promise that?” 

“Of course I will.” 

“Where is he now?” 

“I think he walked over with my husband to the 
Abbas. They get on so well together.” 

“Where is Huntly?” 

“Sleeping in his cabin. Now, you mustn’t worry. 
If you don’t want to be really ill, you should have a 
little light nourishment. Will you promise to drink 
the milk if I can get it?” 


THE LURE 


297 


“Yes, I will try.” 

Reassured, Mrs. Goss closed her eyes : it seemed to 
Anne that it was only a supreme anxiety for her son 
that had kept them open. The sick woman’s eyes 
had a glazed and wandering look that told that the 
fever was clouding her brain in spite of resistance. 

Anne went out softly, closing the door behind her. 
She spent a moment in troubled thought outside, and 
then dispatched Ibrahim over to the Abbas to beg for 
a little milk. That done, she decided to tap at Goss’s 
cabin door and tell him of his wife’s condition. She 
felt certain that they ought not to linger one moment 
longer than was necessary in this unhealthy part of 
the river. 

Her tap was answered by a “Come in.” 

She entered, and saw him sitting at a table half- 
strewn with papers, his chin supported in his hand, a 
tray laden with soda bottles and a whisky bottle on a 
chair beside him. Again she was struck by the sud- 
den degeneration, puffiness and illness of his appear- 
ance. 

“I was afraid I would disturb your siesta ” she 

began. 

“I wasn’t sleepy,” he said, with a kind of irritation. 
“I can’t sleep. I feel absolutely rotten. . . .” 

“I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed. 

“You’re not a bit — damn you, Anne. Why do you 
treat me as you have done the last week?” 

“I came in about your wife,” she replied, with cold- 
ness and distinctness. “She has a touch of fever, and 
in her state of health that may be very dangerous. 
We should move away from here as soon as possible, 
and get to a healthier part of the river.” 

He was standing now, and lifted a book medita- 
tively from the table, turned over its leaves, and placed 
it down again. 


THE LURE 


298 

“We can’t travel by night,” he answered. 

“So my husband said. The reis doesn’t know the 
channel. But we could leave this afternoon.” 

“That’s impossible,” he said briefly. “We’ve got 
to go up and look at this new site Papadopoulo talks 
about.” 

“If it is really necessary that could be done; but 
you could get back from that without waiting for the 
elephant shoot.” 

He fidgeted with the book again. 

“I dare say she’ll be all right by to-night. She’s an 
up-and-down person, full of fancies about herself.” 

“This is no fancy,” Anne said hotly. “And neither 
is the cancer. Perhaps you don’t know that Sir An- 
drew Bainton came on board one day, when the Can- 
dace passed us, at my request, to look at your wife. 
It was he who informed me that she had cancer — that 
she was dying.” 

He looked at her with a curious glance in which 
surprise was mixed with something else, difficult to 
define. 

“Come, Anne — you don’t expect me to be humbug 
enough to say that I feel heart-broken about it? I 
have never acted the hypocrite to you, have I? She 
hates me — I dare say she has told you so, and we have 
only tolerated each other’s existence for years. As 
you know, I am not the sort of man to pretend to 
feel sentimental regret for an event which is no ca- 
lamity to either her or myself, when one thinks of it 
dispassionately. I am sorry that she has such a pain- 
ful disease, poor woman ; but that’s all I can say about 
it. You know she has ruined my life for years. She 
has been the perpetual wet-blanket. She has stood 
in my way. But for her — you and I ” 

“Leave me out of the question,” said Anne tremb- 
ling, with sudden anger. 


THE LURE 


299 


“But you are the question, very much the question. 
Good God, Anne, do you think it easy to see you day 
after day like this, and not remember that you and 
I ” 

She turned to the door, but he was too quick and 
intercepted her, barring the way between herself and 
freedom. 

“That you and I,” he went on in a thicker voice, 
“loved each other — that Fve kissed your lips again 
and again, that if I hadn’t been so damned scrupulous 
I could have ” 

She advanced swiftly, white and trembling, and 
struck him full on the mouth. He came forward 
in an excess of madness, and took her into his arms 
by force, kissing her cheek, her hair, her neck, her 
shoulder, any part of her struggling form that he 
could reach. She could smell the whisky in his breath 
as she fought with him, but his physical strength was 
so superior to hers that she could not free herself till 
he had released her of his own accord. 

Then she rushed past him, without interference, 
speechless, quivering with shame and passion, out on 
to the open deck and into her own cabin. Once there, 
she flung herself on the camp-bed, panting, shaking, 
furious, tears of anger, misery and degradation in her 
eyes, her face hot and burning. 

“The beast!” she cried; and again, “the beast! the 
ineffable beast!” 

The old vehement Anne of childhood was back 
again. She beat her hands against the pillows in a 
paroxysm of rage as if the pillows had been Goss. 

To think that this was the idol she had set up. This 
the god she had worshipped! this the man whom she 
had once allowed to fondle her — to see into her in- 
most soul! She felt soiled, degraded, bruised. She 
would never be clean again. She was unfit for Peter 


3 00 


THE LURE 


to touch. She had been worse than a fool. All the 
glamor, all the romance, and the glory that had made 
Goss what he was to her had suddenly dropped away 
like a mantle — and what was left was a satyr, a satyr 
whose kisses were fresh against her skin. 

Pah! she was stained by them. Gradually her 
stormy sobbing ceased and her passion calmed down. 
She went to the washing basin and scrubbed at her 
face and neck with unnecessary vigor, as if Goss’s 
lips had left a visible imprint upon them. With a 
cooler spirit came cooler reflection, tempering a little 
fury against him. He must obviously have been 
drinking more than was good for him ; his breath had 
told her that. The real person with whom to be angry 
was none other than herself; herself, for a pitiable, 
reprehensible fool. 

Her eyes were still reddened when Peter returned, 
but as she had drawn the shutters ostensibly to cool the 
cabin, her husband did not notice it. 

“Peter,” she said, “I wish you would go in and 
look at Mrs. Goss and take her temperature. Pm sure 
she has fever, and it is especially dangerous for her 
as ” She repeated the story of Sir Andrew’s visit. 

He did not stop to question Anne after the first 
moment of surprise at the fact that she had not told 
him before, but went in immediately to Mrs. Goss’s 
cabin with his thermometer. 

His face was grave when he returned. 

“I think we should get out of this as soon as possi- 
ble,” he remarked. “I couldn’t undertake to dose that 
woman if she is in the state you describe. She has 
just had some milk — she said you gave her quinine. 
It’s not a simple case of fever if she has this internal 
growth as well, and her temperature is pretty high. 
I must go and talk to Goss about it. If we left this 


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301 


afternoon we might reach a wooding station above 
the Bahr-el-Arab to-morrow some time, even if the 
reis will not travel at night, and it’s considerably 
healthier than here. And from there we shall soon get 
on the regular steamer route again, and perhaps strike 
one of the Government boats or a tourist boat with 
some proper medical man on board.” 

“Do go now,” said Anne. “I will find Austin mean- 
while; his mother begged me not to let him out of 
my sight. Where is he?” 

“Just outside, I think.” 

Anne went out, and found him, as Peter had said, 
on the main deck. He had in his arms an unfortun- 
ate-looking baby monkey, gray-furred, bright-eyed 
and pathetic; and Ibrahim was giving it some of the 
milk which had been brought over for Mrs. Goss. 

“Who gave you that, Austin?” she asked. 

“Mr. — Mr. — the fat man over there. Isn’t it kind 
of him?” the youth replied, his vacant eyes shining 
with glee. “I do like him. He is a nice man. I went 
with Captain Host, and the fat man gave me the 
monkey !” 

“How did they catch the poor mite, I wonder?” 
said Anne, feeling pity for the poor motherless little 
thing. 

“That easy,” explained Ibrahim, with a smile, as 
he fed the monkey from the spoon, part of the milk 
oozing out from the creature’s mouth and bedewing 
both whiskers and Austin’s coat. “The man, he put 
a saucer of merissa under the tree. Night come, and 
the little monkey he smell it, and he think very good. 

He drink, and he tumble over, so . And the next 

morning when he awake with very bad head, he find 
that the man have taken him.” 

“They made it drunk!” 

“Yes, lady.” 


302 


THE LURE 


“Poor, unfortunate little beastikins,” said Anne; 
while the monkey, his spirits considerably revived by 
refreshment, sat up on Austin’s arm, and cooed with 
a rounded mouth and innocent eyes, with the engaging 
confidence of babyhood. 


CHAPTER XI 


P ETER returned to Anne with the information 
that Goss did not see how they could avoid go- 
ing up to look at the site, but that the elephant 
shoot was to be abandoned for to-day; they were to 
start as soon as they returned, and the reis was to push 
on as far and as long as he dared. 

“We are going off now, at once,” Captain Host 
continued. “Goss has gone over to rout out the Papa- 
dopoulos, and the bahari are getting the boat ready.” 

Anne was much relieved. Anything that Peter took 
in hand, she had found from her own experience, was 
certain to be completed. She felt in an agony of 
impatience to leave this accursed spot, and to get 
out again on to the broader main river, and back to 
civilization. It had filled her with loathing before, 
but since the episode with Goss, she felt the crocodile 
farm to be unendurable. 

From time to time she crept in to see if Mrs. Goss 
needed anything, but she was either sleeping heavily, 
or in a coma, and Anne came out as noiselessly as she 
went in. The monkey proved to be a great amuse- 
ment to Austin, and she remembered what his mother 
had said about his delight in animals. 

Peter had told her that they expected to be back 
between five and six, and then to leave immediately. 
It was, however, past six when she saw them approach- 
ing in their wide rowing-boat up the oily stillness of 
the channel between the papyrus. 

“How's the patient?” Captain Host asked, as he 
303 


3°4 


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came up the stairs two steps at a time. Goss had got 
out of the dinghy at the Abbas with the Papadopoulos. 

“Neither better nor worse,” Anne replied. “She 
has swallowed some milk, but she seems more than 
half unconscious. She didn’t answer me last time I 
went in. I do hope we shall get off soon.” 

“Goss told me he wouldn’t be five minutes. He has 
a few matters to settle up with the overseers. Then 
we shall be off at once. The engineer knows we’re 
back, he was on the bank. Anne, you don’t look your- 
: self — you’re not going to get fever too, I hope.” 

“Of course not. But I shall be glad when we’ve 
started.” 

“And that’s in five or ten minutes. Ibrahim, some 
drink! I could swallow the river, muddy as it is. 
. . . Hullo, Antonelli, what’s the matter?” 

For the engineer had run up on deck in a state of 
apparent perturbation. He was an Italian, and knew 
no English, and as Captain Host spoke no Italian their 
only means of conversing was in Arabic. He burst 
into fiery explanation in that language now, and 
though Anne could not follow the rapid catechism, she 
gathered that something was amiss. 

“What has happened?” she asked Peter, but he was 
too engrossed to reply to her, and finally disappeared 
with Antonelli down the steps leading to the lower 
deck. It was fully five minutes before he re-appeared, 
and in the meantime Anne saw Goss, accompanied by 
Angelo Papadopoulo, walking rapidly along the shore 
towards the Harriet. 

“Do tell me, what has happened, she repeated. 

“Something, somebody, has been tampering with 
the engines. Antonelli went on shore this afternoon 
while we were away to look over the sheds, and it 
must have happened during his absence. Have you 
noticed any one come aboard?” 


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305 


“I haven’t been noticing,” she replied. “The awn- 
ing is up at the side — don’t you remember Mr. Goss 
had it put up at lunch so as to keep the worst of the 
sun out.” 

“I shall question every one of the men,” said Cap- 
tain Host ; his mouth set in a way that Anne had never 
seen before. “I mean to get at the bottom of this.” 

“How long will it take to repair?” 

“It effectually prevents our getting off to-night.” 

“Oh, I am sorry,” exclaimed Anne, blankly, while 
Austin looked at both of them with a puzzled face, 
as he rocked and crooned over the monkey. 

Goss was up on deck by this time, and approached 
the little group. 

“What’s this about broken machinery?” he in- 
quired. 

“You’ve heard?” 

“Ibrahim told me, below.” 

“Some one has been playing monkey tricks in the 
engine-room,” Peter replied shortly. “I’m afraid that, 
even with the best will in the world, they can’t get the 
repairs finished in time to leave to-night.” 

“That’s unfortunate.” 

“I can’t understand why the engine-room was left 
empty. Apparently the stokers went ashore too.” 

“The black swine!” said Goss, kicking gently at 
the monkey, which had run away from Austin, and 
appeared inclined to swarm up the nearest leg. Austin 
rushed forward with a cry, and picked the animal up, 
'muttering with rage. “As soon as our backs are 
turned, they break through discipline !” 

“Their pay will be docked, of course,” said Peter 
grimly. “But the real fault lies with the Abbas. 
There was a great merissa drinking over there, it 
seems. Most of our people on the nuggur went over, 
and drank themselves crazy. What on earth were the 


3 o 6 THE LURE 

Papadopoulos about to give them free access to drink 
in this way?” 

‘‘In honor of our visit, I suppose,” Goss replied, 
lighting a cigarette. “Angelo has an exuberant 
soul.” 

“He could hardly have lit on a surer plan to retard 
us.” 

“The thing will be to find out who was left on the 
Harriet this afternoon,” Anne put in. “Ibrahim was, 
of course, but he was up here most of the time, clean- 
ing out the cabins and sousing the awning, and doing 
many little things for Austin and me.” 

“Ibrahim is beyond suspicion,” Peter replied. “He 
doesn’t know enough about machinery to start with. 
This has been intelligently done. There are missing 
screws and bolts that show a skilled hand. It is the 
dirtiest, silliest trick that has ever come under my 
notice. It is so motiveless. It’s not the form that 
practical joking would take with the Sudanese, as a 
rule. It looks as though some one had a grudge 
against the unfortunate Antonelli. The man who did 
it shall have a good dose of kumbag, if I can find him. 
But as for discovering who was left on the Harriet 
or our nuggur this afternoon, that seems a sheer im- 
possibility. They have all sworn collectively and singly 
that they didn’t leave the boats, though there’s not one 
of them that isn’t half silly with merissa. It will be 
impossible to squeeze truth out of them. However, I 
shall have the whole lot punished if they won’t speak 
up.” 

“I suppose that the damage can be repaired?” Goss 
questioned. 

“Yes, but Antonelli says it will take time. He’s 
ingenious enough, and of course they are wasting not 
a moment, but he can’t do impossibilities. There’s 
nothing to be done except wait till to-morrow. We 


THE LURE 


307 

can leave as soon as it is light enough to distinguish 
a white thread from a black one, as the rets says.” 

“It only loses a few hours, after all,” said Goss. 
There was an uneasiness, an ill-temper in his manner 
that all his would-be suavity could not hide. Anne 
thought that she could find a reason. 

“Every hour is valuable to Mrs. Goss,” answered 
Captain Host. 

“Is she no better?” Goss addressed himself to Anne. 

“No,” Anne replied curtly. “Could you go in and 
take her temperature again, Peter? I’ll come with 

you. Or ” She hesitated. She did not wish to 

leave Austin since she had promised Mrs. Goss to 
keep him always in sight. On the other hand, she had 
no wish to remain for what was practically a tete-a- 
tete interview with Goss. Austin, engrossed with his 
monkey, could scarcely be counted an intelligent third. 

“Come along, ’ said Peter. “Austin is happy with 
his monkey.” 

Anne followed him into the cabin of the sick wom- 
an. Although every available window was open, and 
the doorway only guarded by a drawn curtain, the 
heat of it was intolerable. Mrs. Goss lay in a heavy 
stupor. It was evident that she had no consciousness 
of what was going on around her. 

“I wish to heaven we had some ice,” said Peter, 
in a low voice, when he had removed the thermometer 
from his patient’s mouth. “We ought to get her tem- 
perature down somehow. It has risen.” 

“Cold water compresses,” suggested Anne. 

“The water is not really cold, and it would mean 
changing the towels as soon as they were put on. 
They’d dry immediately in this atmosphere.” 

“We could do so to-night, perhaps, when it is 
cooler,” Anne suggested. 

“The nights are almost as hot as the days down 


THE LURE 


308 

here. But it might be as well to try. It will take two. 
Can you stand such strenuous nursing, kiddy? We 
could do it between us, I think.” 

“Of course I could,” she said. 

“She oughtn’t to be left alone while she’s like this. 
One of us had better be here the whole time. Either 
you or I or Goss.” 

“Not Goss,” Anne said. “He knows nothing of ill- 
ness, I am sure.” 

“Well, then, you or I.” 

“There’s Austin ” 

“My dearest girl, you seem to have Austin on your 
brain. He’s quite happy.” 

Anne hesitated. How could she tell him of Mrs. 
Goss’s fears; fears which had suddenly, whether ow- 
ing to the unnamable horror of the swamp or to the 
strain on her own nerves, entered into her heart as 
well? She could not. 

“I gave Mrs. Goss my word that I would not leave 
him,” she said. 

“That wasn’t literal. You’ve left him now.” 

“That is true. . . . Oh, Peter, I wish you’d go out 
a moment and see where he is.” 

“Anne, you never used to be a fuss.” 

He went, nevertheless, and returned some ten min- 
utes later. 

“I’ve been talking to Goss. He doesn’t look very 
fit, either. The truth is he ought to drop alcohol dur- 
ing the day while the mercury stands where it does, 
and stick to something less deadly to the liver. I 
told him, without attempting to mince matters, that 
his wife was as ill as she could be. He is fairly cas- 
ual about it, I think.” 

“But Austin?” 

“Oh, Austin’s all right.” 

“Is he with Mr. Goss still?” 


THE LURE 


309 

“No, he’s on shore — with Angelo Papadopoulo. 
Angelo won his heart by the gift of the monkey.” 

“Then I must go with him.” 

“Nonsense, dearest, Angelo can look after him.” 

“Oh, Peter. ... I don’t trust that man. I can’t 
explain . . . but I must go.” 

He followed her out on deck, surprised and puzzled. 

“Where are they?” she asked, scanning the scorched 
piece of promontory. 

“They were on shore a moment ago. Ibrahim — 
where is Mr. Austin?” 

“He go off there,” said Ibrahim, pointing. “With 
Mr. Babadoboulo.” The letter “p” is unpronounce- 
able to the Egyptian tongue. 

Anne followed his finger. It indicated the khor 
which she had traversed that morning with the over- 
seer, the khor which he had nicknamed “the valley of 
death.” 

“I shall follow them,” she said. A dull alarm 
which was almost a presentment of evil had seized 
her mind. 

“You can’t, Anne. That khor’s swarming with 
crocodile, and goes right through the papyrus — it isn’t 
safe.” 

But she had not waited to hear him out. 

He ran after her. “Don’t be ridiculous, kiddy. You 
can’t go.” 

“It isn’t ridiculous,” she said. “I tell you I don’t 
trust that man. I have a reason.” 

“If you go, I shall go too. But even I wouldn't 
venture into that poisonous bit of thicket without a 
rifle.” 

“Where is your rifle?” she said in a passion of sus- 
pense. 

“Abderrahman is cleaning it below.” 

“For God’s sake, then, Peter, get it quickly and 


3 io THE LURE 

come. I shall go on. You can catch me up if you are 
not too slow.” 

She flew down the stairs; over the nuggur; nearly 
falling over the Sudani girl, who lay, overcome by 
merissa, in a sleepy heap on the deck by the tethered 
sheep, her chocolate-colored back glistening greasily; 
on to the landing-stage and along the sun-dried track 
which led towards the papyrus. Just as she reached 
the entrance to the avenue of tall rushes, Captain 
Host overtook her. 

“What a mad, obstinate girl it is,” he began, slip- 
ping his arms into hers. “There’s no hurry.” 

“Perhaps there isn’t. I’m mad if you like, but 
I gave that poor woman my promise, and I must 
keep it.” 

The path narrowed. Captain Host dropped her 
arm, and bidding her keep close behind him, walked 
ahead, just as Angelo Papadopoulo had done that 
morning. The sun, near its setting, scarcely pene- 
trated this thick twilight of reeds, and it was darker 
than it had been on the occasion of her first walk that 
day. The evening is never of long duration in the 
tropics. 

She noticed that her husband kept his Winchester 
ready, and turned a vigilant eye from side to side. 

The path had appeared fairly short to her that 
morning, now it seemed intolerably long. The pe- 
culiar, rank, pungent smell of decaying vegetation 
filled the hot air. The straight papyrus stems with 
their big plumy crests rustled, whispered, quivered, 
bent like the reeds that King Midas once took into his 
confidence. The feet of the two intruders made little 
or no noise on the soft marshy surface of the path, 
which oozed water here and there. 

A bend brought them within sight of the open 
country and the patch of vivid green. Peter had 


THE LURE 


3ii 

quickened his steps a little, and the distance between 
them had widened. 

The vast, soft, maternal light of evening rested on 
the place. The ant-hills which rose, cone-like, from 
the withered plain had the look of monuments to the 
dead. The dom palms and shrubs of the green path 
stood out sombrely against vistas of gold cloud. They 
were robbed of all color in that greater blaze of 
glory. 

Anne paused a moment, to shade her eyes from it, 
and to see if she could see Austin and the stout Greek. 

She had scarcely done so before two rifle reports 
rang out. Her husband had come to a standstill in 
the path before her, and had raised his Winchester. 
Twenty yards away Angelo Papadopoulo was stand- 
ing on the beaten track left by the animals. He, too, 
had a smoking rifle in his hand. It was so sudden, 
so unexpected, that she remained petrified where she 
was, on the path, almost in the self-same spot where 
she had waited that morning while Angelo fetched 
her the blossoms. She could see nothing whatever 
of Austin. 

Her husband continued to run forward towards the 
clump of trees, half stumbling, half leaping through 
the thicker grass which Mr. Papadopoulo had so care- 
fully avoided that morning. 

Anne’s heart stood still. Her husband knew that 
the place was alive with reptiles. . . . She remem- 
bered Angelo’s account of the Saduni boy . . . and 
remained frozen as in the kind of nightmare during 
which the muscles refuse to obey the will. ... Of 
Austin’s whereabouts she thought no longer — only of 
Peter, Peter, whom in that moment of blinding soul- 
illumination, she recognized as the man whose exist- 
ence meant all that life could offer her, whose death 
would mean worse than death; worse, a thousand 


THE LURE 


312 

times worse. ... For to a man what makes life 
worth living is principle, achie/ement, action; while 
to a woman it is only the human beings she loves, per- 
haps only one human being, though achievement and 
action be hers also. 

He ran on swiftly. He had reached a patch of tall 
grass now, some feet away from the tree with the 
strange white blossoms. From the abrupt change in 
his speed, she guessed that he was knee-deep in swamp, 
and that progress was difficult. Now only the top of 
his khaki-colored helmet was visible. Then he stopped. 

Anne thought for one second of agony that he had 
been seized, that he too would be dragged down to- 
wards the black, weedless pool near by. 

But then she saw his khaki-colored helmet again. 
He was turning; but moving with maddening slow- 
ness. Then, as he emerged from the longer grass, 
she saw that he had something, somebody, on his 
arm. 

He gave a great shout to her to stay where she 
was, and she answered in a quavering voice. He had 
reached drier ground and shorter vegetation at last, 
and she saw that the figure which he was half-drag- 
ging, half-supporting, was — Austin. 


CHAPTER XII 


A NGELO PAPADOPOULO came forward zeal- 
ously, as soon as the two had reached a place 
of safety, to assist; so did Anne. Blood was 
soaking through the white suit of the unconscious 
boy, and staining his leg down as far as the knee. 
Peter hastily ripped open the side of the trouser leg, 
and tearing his handkerchief and that which Mr. Pa- 
padopoulo proffered into strips, tightly knotted to- 
gether, he bound the upper leg round above the wound 
so as to stop the profuse bleeding. The bandaging 
was completed by strips torn from Anne’s white un- 
derskirt. 

“There’s nothing very serious about the wound,” 
he said to Anne. Then he cut short Mr. Papadopoulo’s 
flow of exclamation and suggestion by a curt demand 
that he should lift the head of the unconscious youth. 
Peter took the feet, and he gave Anne his rifle and 
Mr. Papadopoulo’s to hold. He himself walked back- 
wards at the head of the odd little procession that 
moved in single file into the dusk of the great weeds. 
In places, it was so dim that they could scarcely see 
their way. 

Unceremoniously- silenced, Mr. Papadopoulo said 
nothing more, and it was a mute trio that walked 
through the papyrus with their senseless burden. 
Anne kept one rifle ready, as her husband had done, 
in case there were any need to use it on the way. The 
other she slung over her shoulder. But they emerged 
into the still lingering remains of daylight at the other 

313 


3H 


THE LURE 


end without mishap. There was not a living soul 
visible on the deck of the Hurriet, and the usual chat- 
ter on the nuggur was stilled. Most of the busy- 
tongued Sudanese were sleeping off the effects of the 
afternoon’s debauch, for they had passed the merry 
stage of intoxication. 

Mr. Papadopoulo assisted Peter in the difficult 
crossing over the nuggur into the ship, and then up 
the stairway on to the central cabin-deck. 

“Goss!” Captain Host shouted, but there was no 
reply. “Put those rifles down, Anne,” he added to 
his wife. 

“Mr. Goss asleep. He have very bad head,” said 
Ibrahim, coming forward. As he caught sight of the 
bleeding and unconscious figure, his eyes, with their 
black pupils and red-brown whites, opened wide with 
horror and amazement. “Ya Allah!” he cried. 

“Get some brandy and bring it to Mr. Austin’s 
cabin, Ibrahim,” Host said. “Go on, Mr. Papado- 
poulo. It is the second door there to the right.” 

Anne went ahead to open the door, and the two 
men went in, and laid the youth on the bed. She 
followed. 

Mr. Papadopoulo stood straight once more, and 
wiped off the perspiration which ran down from his 
brow to his triple chin with a towel he found on the 
washstand. 

“Emotion do make me sweat,” he remarked. “My 
disposition is so nervous. This is indeed a terrible 
accident. Where would this poor young man have 
been but for our promptness? I fear to think. Now, 
Captain ’Ost, what can I do more? All that is on 
the Abbas is yours ... I think there is no danger. 
Heaven be thanked. The bullet went clean in and out 
. . . Pardon, Captain ’Ost, but what in the diable you 
make so for ?” 


THE LURE 


3i5 


His English had departed in his agitation. 

Captain Host had gone to the door during Mr. 
Papadopoulo’s little speech, and turning the key in 
the lock, had pocketed it before returning to his min- 
istrations by the bed. 

‘‘Why do I do that, Mr. Papadopoulo? Obviously 
because I do not mean you to leave this room yet. 
When you do leave it, you will go to another cabin 
below, where you will probably remain until we get 
to Khartoum.” 

“Captain ’Ost, you pleasant — you joke with me.” 

“I assure you, I am perfectly serious.” 

“But what is this? Why you criminally detain 
me? I shall speak to Mr. Goss. He is the captain 
of this ship. This is damn cheek. I help you, I 
come here full of politeness and kindness of ’eart, and 
you pull the door on my face and treat me as one 
would treat a robber.” 

“I detain you, Mr. Papadopoulo, because you have 
been guilty of wounding this young man feloniously. 
And you will remain in detention until you get to 
Khartoum.” 

“But,” shrieked the Greek, “it was the crocodile at 
what I fire. You fire too. It was your bullet that 
went through his leg. This is a disgrace. It is a 
beastly shame.” 

“I happen to use expanding bullets. This is, you 
have observed, a clean wound.” 

“Every one miss sometimes.” 

“I think rather highly of your marksmanship, Mr. 
Papadopoulo.” 

Ibrahim tapped at the door. 

Captain Host went to it and unlocked it ; Anne saw 
as he did so that he had taken from his breast pocket 
the little revolver which he usually carried about with 
him. Mr. Papadopoulo’s eyes fell on it too. 


THE LURE 


316 

“Our argument will take some time, Mr. Papado- 
poulo, and I think we wifl postpone it, if you please. 
You will accompany Ibrahim to the cabin next the 
engineer’s below, and I shall walk that far with you. 
If you attempt to run — an unwise thing for a man 
of your weight in this climate — I shall empty a cham- 
ber of this revolver into some portion of your person.” 

He opened the door with one hand, keeping the 
unhappy and speechless Mr. Papadopoulo covered with 
the revolver he held in the other. 

“It is an outrage, an assassinat — ” stuttered the 
overseer. 

Ibrahim entered, and passing Captain Host and Mr. 
Papadopoulo, deposited a bottle of brandy on the floor 
beside Anne. 

“Ibrahim, kindly take Mr. Papadopoulo’s right hand 
and conduct him to the empty cabin beside Mr. An- 
tonelli’s down-stairs.” 

For a moment Ibrahim gasped, then with the perfect 
and literal obedience of the Berberine servant, he 
grasped Mr. Papadopoulo’s perspiration-wet hand. 

Mr. Papadopoulo pulled it away, and uttered a tor- 
rent of malediction in Arabic and injured surprise in 
broken English. 

“Come, Mr. Papadopoulo,” said Captain Host, pa-* 
tiently, keeping him covered all the time with the muz- 
zle of the little revolver. “Do not waste time, I beg 
you. Ibrahim has to lay dinner, and I wish to dress 
this wound. Dinner can be sent down to you, and 
we will enter into all explanations afterwards. I am 
perfectly willing to hear them, I assure you. If they 
are satisfactory, you go back to the Abbas after hav- 
ing eaten here with us — or I should say down- 
stairs.” 

“But — but I will not stay here. You cannot keep 
me here. I demand to see Mr. Goss.” 


THE LURE 


3U 


“You shall see Mr. Goss presently. I am sorry to 
have to force hospitality on you. . . He walked 
a step towards the Greek, and suddenly, with new- 
found meekness, the stout overseer put his hand into 
that of the amazed Berberine, and proceeded through 
the open door. His bluster went out from him as the 
air leaves a pricked balloon. 

Captain Host followed at his heels, keeping the 
muzzle of the revolver gently pressed against Angelo’s 
back. 

Anne had been struck dumb by amazement during 
this little drama. Now that the cabin was empty 
again, she opened the brandy bottle with a shaking 
hand, and, pouring some into a toothglass, she lifted 
Austin’s head and endeavored to force some between 
his flaccid and colorless lips. Captain Host re-entered 
as she did so, and closed the door. 

“I hope I didn’t alarm you, kiddy.” 

“I don’t understand!” she replied, turning a white 
face towards him. “What exactly has happened ? And 
where is Mr. Papadopoulo ?” 

“Papadopoulo is locked up in that empty cabin. As 
for what happened — you’ll hear later on, and I may 
get possibly an explanation of what mystifies me con- 
siderably at the present moment. What on earth could 
have been that Greek villain’s object in firing at Aus- 
tin, or in letting him go into the swamp? Well, we’ll 
forget about it now, and attend to the leg. Fetch me 
my medicine chest, there’s a good girl ; it’s on my bed 
in our cabin.” 

She sped off. 

They had dressed the leg, and Austin had returned 
to consciousness. He had fainted as much from 
fright as from his injury. 

“Where’s my monkey?” was the first question to 


THE LURE 


3iS 

Anne, who was left in charge while Captain Host 
went in to see the other invalid next door. 

“I don't know, Austin. Did you take him with 
you? What did you do?” 

Austin frowned, as he always did when making a 
mental effort. 

“My leg’s pricking,” he said. “Have you put a 
needle into it?” 

“No — you fell down and hurt it. . . . But tell me 
about the monkey.” 

“The fat man asked me to bring the monkey with 
me and we would walk together. He was very funny ; 
he made me laugh. He made the monkey sit on his 
hat, and the monkey thought he would fall and 
screamed. ... It was very funny.” 

The poor brain was stimulated by the memory of 
the droll sight. 

“What happened after that?” prompted Anne, 
gently. 

“Where is my monkey?” demanded Austin, pite- 
ously. 

“I don’t know. We will get you another perhaps, 
if this is lost. Tell me what else you and the fat man 
and the monkey did on your walk.” 

Austin knitted his brows together again. 

“We went through a wood — of grass. And then 
we came to a place where there was water ... I 
know! ... it was there that the fat man put the 
monkey down. And the monkey ran away, and I ran, 
and he ran into the grass. It was all squashy. The 
fat man called to me to catch him. So I ran.” 

“Yes?” said Anne. 

An expression of terror came into the young man’s 
fair, silly face. 

“I don’t remember after that,” he said. “Oh, 
where is my monkey?” 


THE LURE 


3i9 

“We will find him to-morrow/’ soothed Anne. 
“Perhaps he will come back.” 

“Do you think he will come back ?” asked the youth 
simply. 

“I think he may, very likely,” Anne replied. “And 
he will have lots of little brothers and sisters, perhaps 
he may send one of them instead.” 

“We will ask the fat man,” said Austin in content, 
and, turning his face towards the wall, he fell asleep 
peacefully, the brandy and loss of blood having made 
him somnolent. 

Anne went softly in search of her husband, and 
found him just outside, in the act of coming to find 
her. 

“How’s the boy getting on?” 

“He’s sleeping. Is Mrs. Goss better?” 

“Not much. But, thank goodness, it’s cooler. 
There’s a fall of several degrees in the thermometer 
on deck. I’ve been to look. The wind is fresher. It 
may save her yet.” 

“And Mr. Goss?” 

“Goss ! He’s been drinking. He’s no better than the 
natives. He’s too fuddled with drink to make any 
sensible answer when I speak to him. He told Ibra- 
him he had sunstroke. But he reeks of drink. I 
never knew that he was subject to that kind of 
thing.” 

“Neither did I,” Anne replied in surprise. “It is 
not like him.” 

“Ibrahim says he took him up the ingredients for 
cocktails this evening, and that Goss swore at him, 
and said the sun had touched his head. I think, Anne, 
I was fairly correct in my first estimate of our fluent 
company promoter.” 

She flushed. “I think you were,” she returned. 
“Have you changed yet, Peter? No — why, you’re 


3 20 


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wet up to your thighs still! Do go and put on dry 
things at once, it’s so bad for you.” 

“I’m going off to get a bath,” he replied. “I’ll 
leave you in charge of the hospital for a bit and then 
go on duty while you get dinner. I say, Anne, this 
is a cheerful trip, isn’t it? We’ve a little melodrama 
thrown in to-day gratis.” His blue eyes met hers in a 
humorous dismay which was irresistible. Beneath the 
surface, her husband was always a boy, a Peter Pan 
who would never grow up, rejoicing in adventure, and 
meeting life with eager interest. “Cheer up, little 
girl; you’ve behaved like a brick under the most try- 
ing circumstances. I shall present you with a large 
medal in some form or other as soon as we get back 
to the uneventful domesticity of Khartoum. You 
shall choose it from the Stores list yourself — the jewel- 
ry department.” 

“Go and get your bath, you incorrigible person,” 
she replied sternly, as he caught her about the waist 
and kissed her. “Oh, Peter,” she added in another 
voice, “I was so terrified when I saw you plunging 
into that swamp by the pool this evening.” 

“Did you think that a wily crocodile would sup 
off me? I thought it possible too, considering how 
near they were to getting Austin. The monkey had 
to go instead. Would you have wept for me very 
long?” 

“Should I?” she repeated in a choked voice. “It 
would have killed me.” 

He looked at her tear-filled eyes in surprise. This 
was an Anne he did not know. It was an Anne he 
had never dared to hope for, in his simplicity of 
soul. 


CHAPTER XIII 


« A ND now, Mr. Papadopoulo, the moment has 

Jr come to explain certain matters which are 
mystifying me a good deal,” said Captain 
Host. “For the benefit of Mr. Goss and my wife, I 
shall recount first of all exactly what happened two 
and a half hours ago. . . . Ibrahim, please give Mr. 
Papadopoulo a liqueur with his coffee. Chartreuse, 
Mr. Papadopoulo, or Benedictine, or a brandy ?” 

Mr. Papadopoulo, whose collar sat limply around 
his neck, or rather the crease that did duty for a neck, 
intimated sulkily that he would prefer a brandy. 

“One fine champagne ” Captain Host ordered Ibra- 
him. “And then you may go.” 

Goss had apparently recovered from the effects of 
sunstroke — or cocktails — and lounged in a deck-chair 
at its lowest notch. He had dressed with his usual 
care, and with Goss dress was a matter of ritual. 
Yet a couple of shamadans, burning in the middle of 
the table — for they had dined in the mosquito-house 
— showed him to be pallid. The flesh hung in an un- 
wontedly loose and heavy fold about his well-cut 
mouth. 

“Mr. Goss,” the Greek began with intense earnest- 
ness, as soon as Ibrahim had closed the door behind 
him, bringing his fat and dimpled hand down on the 
table with the dull sound of well-padded flesh, “I pro- 
test, I solemnly protest. This is an illegal detention. 
I appeal to you. I shall bring an action against Cap- 
tain ’Ost. He has treated me as if I were a dirty 
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322 


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nigger. I shall have a damage from him. I shall get 
fifty pound Egyptian damage from him.” 

Goss said nothing. He merely shook off his cigar 
ash into the saucer of his coffee cup without raising 
his eyes. 

“I must ask you to be quiet for a moment, Mr. 
Papadopoulo,” interrupted Peter. “Mr. Goss cannot 
offer an opinion until he has heard the circumstances.” 

“Certainly not,” replied Goss, in a cold voice. 

“Very well, then. Mr. Goss, you are a witness to 
j the first part of my story, at any rate. Mr. Papado- 
poulo came on board about seven o’clock, and had a 
whisky-and-soda with you, and when he went on 
shore, he took your step-son with him.” 

“And the monkey,” interposed Mr. Papadopoulo, 
gathering courage as he sipped the liqueur which the 
attentive Ibrahim had poured out for him. 

“Quite so, Mr. Papadopoulo. A very proper 
amendment, but I must ask you to reserve all further 
comment, however relevant, to the end.” 

Mr. Papadopoulo subsided into wrathful silence. 

Captain Host resumed his story. “And the mon- 
key, as Mr. Papadopoulo observes. I came out just 
as the three, counting the monkey, were starting. I 
stayed to talk to you, Mr. Goss; my wife was with 
Mrs. Goss in her cabin. On my return, she asked me 
where Austin was. I replied that he was on shore with 
Mr. Papadopoulo. She said that as she had promised 
Mrs. Goss not to let him out of her sight, she must 
go after him. I attempted to dissuade her, more par- 
ticularly as Ibrahim told us they had gone up the khor 
to the right, through the papyrus, but she insisted on 
going, and started at once. I got my rifle and fol- 
lowed her, and caught her up. We walked in single 
fire through ” 

“All this is very circumstantial,” remarked Goss, 


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323 


suddenly rousing himself from his easy position, and 
speaking with a show of impatience, “but I don’t see 
how it affects the accident to my step-son, which, it 
seems, after all, is not of a serious character.” 

“I think when you have heard me out, that you will 
be as anxious as I am to get an explanation from Mr. 
Papadopoulo.” 

“Go on,” said Goss, briefly. 

“I walked several paces ahead, so that when I had 
reached the open, my wife was still unable to see as 
much as I did. Mr. Papadopoulo did not notice our 
arrival, it is needless to say. I have an eye which 
is almost as quick and practised as a native’s, and 
the first thing that I saw was Austin’s helmet moving 
in the long grass of the swamp, the part which Mr. 
Papadopoulo himself informed us this morning is alive 
with crocodiles. The second thing I saw was the 
monkey escaping some yards ahead on the softer and 
barer soil which leads down to the pool, and, still 
more important, a crocodile moving towards it and 
the longer grass. I may say that there was a good 
five yards between the crocodile and the long grass. 
But it was easy to see that Austin, in his chase after 
the monkey, must inevitably run straight on to the 
reptile in a moment. I shot at the brute, and killed 
him. He did not even writhe. His body is still there, 
you can verify what I say to-morrow. Now, a shot 
preceded mine by a fraction of a second. Mr. Papa- 
dopoulo, who stood on the comparative safety of the 
track, had fired too. But it was not at the crocodile 
that he took aim, but at Austin.” 

“That is a damn lie,” said Mr. Papadopoulo, hotly. 
“I shot at the crocodile, same as you. I missed him, 
that is all. Any one could do the same.” 

“There was a distance of at least five yards be- 
tween your step-son and the crocodile,” repeated Cap- 


324 


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tain Host, with emphasis. “From the little display 
of markmanship which Mr. Papadopoulo gave us this 
morning, when he so cleverly brought down a small 
weaver bird in flight, I cannot pay him the doubtful 
compliment of thinking that he missed a compara- 
tively stationary object at thirty yards by as much as 
five yards.” 

“The sun was in my eyes.” said Mr. Papadopoulo. 

“I really see no reason to doubt Mr. Papadopoulo’s 
statement, my dear Host,” interposed Goss, with a 
smile. “As he says, accidents of this kind will hap- 
pen even when one is an excellent shot. The sun 
being in his eyes was surely excuse enough.” 

“But the sun was not in his eyes,” Captain Host 
objected. “It was at right angles to mine, but Mr. 
Papadopoulo had his back to it. Hadn’t he, Anne?” 

“Yes,” replied Anne. 

“When it is a question of a diffused light in a 
damp atmosphere, refraction of the rays at evening 
causes very illusory effects, surely,” said Goss, coolly. 

“It had no effect on my sight.” 

“But you were at a different angle, you say.” 

“That is so. Still, Mr. Goss, I assure you, from 
the evidence of my own eyesight backed by common 
sense, that when Papadopoulo fired, he fired at your 
step-son, and not at the crocodile. Why, good Lord, 
to miss by five yards at that distance is sheer im- 
possibility!” 

“After all,” said Goss, easily, “no harm has been 
done.” He paused and then added: “Besides, what 
possible motive could actuate Mr. Papadopoulo to 
such an attempt?” 

“And if I wished to kill Mr. Goss’s son,” put in 
Mr. Papadopoulo, whose indignation rose visibly as 
he heard himself vindicated, “why did I not shoot 
him in the head?” 


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325 


“Because, I take it, you were casuist enough to 
leave the actual work of dispatching him to the croc- 
odiles, M Captain Host replied. “They would soon 
discover the presence of a helpless body in the bushes, 
and destroy all traces.” 

“That is pre-supposing Mr. Papadopoulo to be a 
devil,” said Goss, with some indignation. “Captain 
Host, you are overstepping your province, if you will 
permit me to say so. Mr. Papadopoulo is my over- 
seer; what object could he have in doing malicious 
harm to a relative of mine? I am satisfied with his 
explanation. I say so, now. That should be enough. 
I am, of course, very much obliged to you for the 
trouble you have taken — from the best motives, of 
course; and still more grateful because you rescued 
my step-son from what would have been possibly a 
very dangerous situation; but I think we should ten- 
der our apologies to Mr. Papadopoulo for having de- 
tained him with such scant courtesy.” 

Mr. Papadopoulo’s damp and pallid face broke out 
into a smile. He sat upright. 

“I have been insulted,” he affirmed, turning an 
injured countenance towards Captain Host. 

“Wait one moment,” said Anne. She moistened 
her lips, and pulled herself together. “I must say 
something. ... I do not speak as from myself, but 
from Mrs. Goss. . . .” She broke off for an instant, 
unable to proceed. 

“Go on, Anne.” Her husband was looking at her 
in surprise. 

“Mrs. Goss told me the other night that she had 
reason for believing that Mr. Goss would prefer Aus- 
tin dead. She said that while she did not suppose 
that her husband intended to injure him himself ” 
Anne gathered courage as she went on, “he would 
not be sorry if an accident were to remove him, as in 


THE LURE 


326 

that case he would benefit to the extent of fifty thou- 
sand pounds. It is possible that Mr. Papadopoulo 
knew this . . . and deliberately put Austin into 
danger.” 

There was a moment of absolute silence. Goss 
glanced up at her in utter amazement, but uttered no 
word. Anne was trembling violently at her own au- 
dacity. But she felt that she could keep silence no 
longer. It was a question of protecting Austin. And 
she had not denounced the man she once loved, for 
she had never loved him as he really was. She had 
loved a husk and filled it with her own idealized 
conceptions. 

“Do you know you’ve brought a serious accusation 
against Mr. Goss, Anne ?” said her husband’s troubled 
voice. 

“I have only repeated what his wife said to me,” 
she replied, lifting a face from which every vestige 
of color had departed. “Mr. Goss said that as Mr. 
Papadopoulo was devoted to his interests, he could 
have no object in attempting the life of a relative 
of his.” 

Peter was visiby perplexed. 

“Is there — there can’t be ... is there any truth in 
what your wife says?” he said to Goss, with the look 
of a man who has lost his bearings. 

“I should certainly come in for a little money if 
both my wife and step-son were to die,” said Goss, 
“though I am not in need of it. I should not volun- 
teer such a piece of personal information, if my wife 
had not succeeded in disseminating it already with 
construction and additions of her own. Her imagin- 
ation has been very much distorted by disease, poor 
creature. ...” He came to a stop, and looked 
towards Anne. She could feel his hatred of her as 
one would feel the proximity of a white-hot flame. 


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327 


His was not a temperament which readily forgives. 
He went on, “But that Mrs. Host should repeat what 
my wife said, and endeavor to bring an accusation of 
this melodramatic sort against me, does not astonish 
me much !” He paused a second time, and then added 
deliberately: “We had a difference of opinion in my 
cabin to-day. Women who fancy themselves injured 
or neglected are apt to bring hysterical accusations 
against men they have professed themselves to be in 
love with. Your wife and I, Captain Host, date our 
friendship — an intimate friendship — from several 
years ago.” 

Peter rose, blind with anger. 

“You cur — you liar!” 

“Ask her!” Goss said, coolly. 

Captain Host sat down with a calm that was sudden 
and dangerous. “I’ll give you one minute to leave 
this place or be kicked out.” 

“Ask her.” 

“I knew Mr. Goss years ago,” said Anne, in a quick 
clear voice, interrupting. “But I was not aware of his 
real character. I’ve not been fully aware of it till 
this moment. The rest is fiction.” 

“You needn’t trouble to answer, Anne,” said Cap- 
tain Host. “Mr. Goss’s assertion is disproved by its 
own absurdity and effrontery. I shall ask him to 
retract and apologize for having made it before you 
leave, or ” 

He did not complete the sentence; it was hardly 
necessary. 

“Then perhaps Mrs. Host can explain this,” said 
Mr. Goss, with a smile. “Women have a habit of pre- 
serving indiscreet correspondence. Men usually de- 
stroy these things, but this turned up in an old note- 
book which I brought up with me because it contained 
some statistics useful to our leather project. It hap- 


THE LURE 


328 

pened to be there; I suppose I forgot it. There were 
others. If a note is compromising, I always tear it 
up; but this, as you will see, is harmless in itself, 
though it sufficiently contradicts any impression that 
we were mere acquaintances which Mrs. Host may 
have given you.” 

He took out a leather notebook, and, opening it, 
extracted from a recess a single sheet of paper marked 
with a cross where it had remained folded for three 
years. 

“You will recognize Mrs. Host’s handwriting,” he 
added, putting it on the table. 

Anne’s heart had almost stopped. The audacity, 
the fiendish ingenuity of the means he had chosen to 
divert the attack she had made on him, took away 
her very breath. He had cleverly turned her own 
passionate denial against her, whereas it had been 
called forth by his reference to the scene in the cabin 
that morning. 

Yet, what note could this be? She had no remem- 
brance of writing any note to Goss that he could pos- 
sibly produce to prove that there had been anything 
more than friendship between them. 

“Is it your handwriting?” asked Host. The ques- 
tion was almost mechanical. 

“Yes,” she replied. 

He handed it to her. “Tear it up.” 

“No,” she replied. “I would rather that you read 
it.” Whatever it might be, if it were once unread 
and destroyed, it might injure the perfect confidence 
that had existed between them. He would never 
speak of it, but that very silence would hurt her. It 
was better that the thing should be cleared up now, 
once and for all. If not, though he would be too 
generous to ask her, he would wonder; and, however 
much he might strangle doubt, he was only human. 


THE LURE 


3 2 9 

He spread it out, and let hi 3 eyes fall on the 
paper. 

“Djsar, 

‘I must not see you alone again. I can’t keep up 
the pretence of friendship, and anything else is im- 
possible. 

‘‘Yours always, A. 

“I trust yor but I do not trust myself. Forgive 
me, please.” 

He read it, with an immovable face, once, twice. 
Then he handed it to Anne. 

“Did you write it ?” he asked with a voice in which 
there was a suspicion of hoarseness. 

She glanced at it. “Yes.” 

She was too proud to attempt to enter on any ex- 
planation or defence before Goss or Papadopoulo. 
The latter, entirely at his ease now, sat back with the 
air of a man in a free stall at the theatre. 

Peter looked at her for an instant, as she handed it 
back. Then he tore it across and across. 

“Fortunately for you, Mr. Goss, that is an entirely 
valueless communication,” he said in a tone of indif- 
ference. “It proves that my wife knew you — but 
nothing further. I shall not insult her by discuss- 
ing it.” 

Anne understood. He was attempting to protect 
her before Papadopoulo. 

Goss was still smiling. 

“I don’t think that we will keep Mr. Papadopoulo 
any longer,” Captain Host added in a businesslike 
tone. “I am — for the present — bound to accept his 
explanation — and yours — with reference to the rifle- 
shot.” 

“Upon my word, Captain Host, you are pretty cool. 


33 ° 


THE LURE 


I think an apology is due to my overseer. As my 
wife is concerned in the charge indirectly brought 
against me by Mrs. Host, we will leave that.” 

“I shall retract both charges,” Peter said, his eyes 
unnaturally blue in his colorless face, “when I am con- 
vinced that they are false.” 

He rose, opened the door, and waited for Anne to 
pass out before him. 

“Good-evening,” said Goss. 

“Good-evening, Mrs. Host,” repeated Angelo, in- 
solently. 

Anne thought for an instant that her husband 
would rush back to choke the words from the Greek’s 
throat; but he remained holding the handle of the 
door, and when she had gone out he followed her 
into the starlit night and closed it behind him. 


CHAPTER XIV 


H E went to the side of the boat, and looked over 
at the darkened swamp, sullen and limitless, 
beneath a sky sown with stars. 

She followed him. 

“Peter!” 

“Yes.” 

“I must tell you — everything.” 

“Well?” He did not look at her. 

“I told you about this — one night when you came 
home with me. We had been spending the evening 
at the flat. It was night when you asked me if I 
could ever consent to coming out here — do you re- 
member, Peter?” 

She spoke indistinctly, hurriedly, timidly. 

“But I didn’t imagine that it was this sort of 
thing.” His voice was hard. “How far did it go? 
Women don’t write to a man beginning ‘Dear’ and 

ending ‘yours always’ unless ” He broke off 

sharply. “Oh, kiddy, kiddy, why didn’t you tell me 
this before?” 

Anne tried to speak, but a lump in her throat, a 
rising sob prevented her. 

“If it had been a decent man, I could have — under- 
stood, perhaps. But this bounder, this cur. Don’t 
cry, for God’s sake. Just tell me honestly how far 
it went.” 

She lifted her head. 

“Have you ever known me to tell an untruth, 
Peter? It never went as far as ... he hinted to 
33i 


33 2 


THE LURE 


you . . . you cannot think it possible. On my honor, 
Peter. I was infatuated, silly . . . perhaps a girl 
fresh from the country, where she sees no one but 
women and has no standards to measure life by, is 
more easily taken in. I did think that I was in love 
with him. But when I found out that what he pre- 
tended was legitimate friendship was ” She hesi- 
tated; “ — only an excuse for — for . Oh, Peter, 

I can’t explain!” 

“You must explain,” he said, boyishly and fiercely. 

“Well, he kissed me one evening in a cab coming 
back from the theatre,” she said, choking down her 
emotion, and speaking rapidly. “I saw then that I 
was in love with him and that it wasn’t right, and 
I wrote him that letter. I never saw him alone after 
that.” 

“He had kissed you before, I suppose?” 

“Yes, sometimes. Not quite in the same way. He 
used to say that it was prudish of me to object and 
that there was no real harm in it ... so I let him. 
I was in love with him all the time, and I didn’t real- 
ize it.” 

“But, good Lord, you were twenty-three. You 
weren’t a child!” 

“I know I wasn’t,” she answered, hopelessly. She 
had never seen the past so luridly as she saw it now 
in the flame of his horror and disgust. 

“You were in love with — Goss!” he repeated. 

“Can’t you understand ?” she cried. “I wasn’t ever 
in love with Goss ” 

“You say you were.” 

“Not with Goss. With an impossible person, an 
ideal endued with all the qualities I gave him credit 
for.” 

“Yes,” he admitted, slowly. “I see that — but it is 
horrible. To think that that second-rate beast can 


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333 


use your name . . . talk of you familiarly . . . 
knows the touch of your lips . . . the little trick you 
have of throwing your head backward to receive a 
kiss . . . can't you understand that it is horrible .” 

“Understand!” she exclaimed. “How can you think 
that I don’t realize it. If it is horrible to you, it is 
more horrible to me. It is so horrible that I shut the 
remembrance out of my thoughts. Oh, Peter — it isn’t 
the past which really counts. You can’t love me be- 
cause of what I’ve done or left undone. If you love 
me at all, it is for what I am.” 

“But I can’t imagine the woman I thought you be- 
ing subject to ” He did not finish. 

“To illusion,” she said, eagerly. “The reality is 
you, and only you. That was all nightmare and self- 
deception, and it is torture to think of it with sane 
waking senses.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me when the question of the 
trip was broached?” 

“I didn’t want to raise ghosts.” 

“You’ve raised them pretty effectually, after all.” 

She made no answer. Sobs shook her body. Then 
she said passionately — 

“And you — Peter — did you never think you loved 
another woman? Haven’t you told me you did, and 
that you had forgotten it? That you met her with- 
out any feelings?” 

“That was different. She was a thoroughly nice 
woman.” 

“Do you suppose that I didn’t think that Goss was 
a thoroughly nice man? Is a girl of twenty-three 
who has been in a country village all her life to be 
irretrievably damned because she has made a hero of 
a man clever enough and experienced enough to play 
upon her imagination? Men make mistakes; they 
idealize the wrong women. Yet a girl, who is with- 


334 


THE LURE 


out even the knowledge of a world possessed by an 
upper-form school-boy, is supposed to have infallible 
judgment.” 

“Does a thoroughly nice man, who is married to 
another woman, kiss a girl he knows he can’t 
marry ?” 

“It wasn’t as crude as that. I never thought of it 
like that/’ 

“The idea must have occurred to you.” 

“Not like that.” 

He drummed his fingers against the rail. Then he 
said, “Was there any foundation in what he said 
about your being in his cabin to-day?” 

“Yes,” she replied, calming her voice forcibly. And 
she told him exactly what had occurred. 

“Why, in God’s name, didn’t you tell me, so that 
I could have kicked some respect of decent women 
into him?” Peter cried. 

“It would have meant telling you the other.” 

Again he relapsed into silence, till she said, tim- 
idly — 

“Peter, I think I ought to go to Mrs. Goss. I sent 
Ibrahim over for some milk for her a long time ago, 
and she should take some food again by now.” 

He did not reply, so she left him. 

The Paradise that had opened to her that evening 
was suddenly barred by the flaming sword of retri- 
bution. She was driven forth into the wilderness once 
more. 

She peeped into Austin’s cabin on the way to his 
mother’s and saw that he was propped up and eating 
some dinner which Ibrahim had brought him. He 
smiled at her cheerfully, and informed her that he 
was very hungry and that he wanted to get up. 

“You mustn’t do that yet,” she said. “We’ll see 


THE LURE 


335 

about it to-morrow. I’m going to see your mother 
now. I'm taking her this milk.” 

“I want to come, too,” he pleaded. 

“No, not yet. She sends you her love, and says 
you must not move.” 

He was docile enough to accept her fabricated mes- 
sage as law, and after finding an old illustrated maga- 
zine, she set him to work at cutting out pictures. 

It was certainly much cooler. A wind that was 
almost chilly caught her dress as she left the cabin, 
and whistled up the deck. She went next to the sick 
woman. Anne saw at once that she was far better. 
Her eyes were open and intelligent; the unnatural, 
heavy look was gone. 

“Where is Austin?” she asked. 

“He has hurt his leg, running after his monkey,” 
said Anne. “We’ve made him go to bed. But you 
need not be in the least alarmed; it’s not serious.” 

“Monkey? What monkey?” 

“Mr. Papadopoulo gave him one. Please drink 
this milk. You look so much better.” 

“I think I am,” Mrs. Goss replied. She drank the 
milk and then added, “You will take care of him, 
won’t you?” 

“Of Austin? I’ve promised you that I will” 

Mrs. Goss asked a few more questions, and then 
closed her eyes again and went to sleep once more. 

Anne blew out the candle, and sat a while in the 
darkness. Darkness seemed to envelop her soul as 
well. Peter had not forgiven her. Would he? Could 
it ever be the same ? She was miserable, so miserable 
that she could only sit, dry-eyed, and think and think. 
Her heart ached with longing for her husband, that 
he might understand, or at least forgive, if under- 
standing were impossible. 

Mrs. Goss turned in her sleep and uttered a little 


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336 

cry. It sounded like fear. Anne’s thoughts took an- 
other abrupt turn. This dying woman had entrusted 
her son to her care. She was no longer in any 
doubt as to what the charge which had devolved upon 
her meant. She would have to combat the intention 
of a clever and entirely unprincipled genius. She 
knew now that Goss, in the desperation of a man 
pushed to the utmost for money, had decided to rid 
himself if possible of this poor incubus, whose exist- 
ence stood between him and what he wanted. His 
cynical and decadent creed did not forbid it, and 
would not forbid it or anything else that he wanted 
to obtain. He pushed egotism to its logical and most 
ruthless conclusion. But that to-day’s attempt had 
tested even his nerve, she had proof in his drinking 
heavily. That was not like him. While she detested 
him, she recognized that there was no weakness in 
what he did. Everything that he planned as a rule 
was brilliantly and coolly carried out. Perhaps this 
swamp, with its subtle, courage-robbing influences, 
had had its effect upon him, too. 

If only she could make it impossible for Goss ever 
to see Austin again! 

Mrs. Goss sighed once more in her sleep. The 
sound, slight as it was, roused Anne from her medi- 
tation. It must be getting late. 

She rose noiselessly, intending to go to her own 
cabin. Her head ached violently. She was worn out, 
sick at heart, weary of head. 

Clouds had drifted over the sky, and the wind con- 
tinued to blow from some colder quarter. It was 
dark along the portion of deck that she had to tra- 
verse to her own cabin, except for the light that came 
from the other end of the boat. She walked slowly. 
She could hear the rustling of the grasses and the 
papyrus in the wind — it rose and fell rhythmically 


THE LURE 


337 

with a sound like the distant breaking of surf. She 
paused to listen to it for a moment, but as she did so 
a figure slipped out of the obscurity and a hand 
touched her arm. 

Anne turned quickly, with a muffled scream. 

In the dim light she was just able to distinguish 
the form of a native girl, whose tobe was pulled 
tightly about her form. Her feet and arms were 
bare. 

“Ya sitt!” began the girl, hurriedly, “Fein Host 
Bey?” (“Oh, lady, where is Host Bey?”) 

“I don’t know. I don’t speak Arabic,” returned 
Anne in the same tongue, using two phrases that 
Peter had taught her. 

But the girl clutched at her again, and in spite of 
Anne’s declaration, she poured out a voluble flow of 
words. She seemed beside herself with fear. 

Looking about her in despair, Anne espied Ibrahim 
at the still lighted end of the boat, and called to him. 
The Berberine came hurrying up. 

“What is this woman saying?” Anne asked him. 
“She seems in great distress, but I don’t understand 
a word.” 

Ibrahim spoke to her. 

“She says she want Captain Host immediate. She 
says Mr. Angelo Babadoboulo and his brother 
they fight very bad. She says she’s Mr. Gabriel 
Babadoboulo’s wife, and she afraid they kill each 
other.” 

“Go quickly and find Captain Host,” said Anne. 
“I think he’s upstairs.” 

Ibrahim departed at a run, while the girl continued 
her half-sobbing monologue, keeping her hand on 
Anne’s dress. 

Peter appeared a moment later, and a rapid collo- 
quy in Arabic ensued. Then he turned and ran down 


THE LURE 


338 

the stairs quickly, the Sudani girl close at his heels, a 
sobbing brown shadow on noiseless bare feet. 

“That the same girl what came this morning to 
see Host Bey,” remarked Ibrahim. 

“What are they fighting about ?” Anne asked, 
dazedly. 

“They fight before. She say Mr. Gabriel a devil, 
but Mr. Angelo worse devil. She’s dreadful frighten 
of Mr. Angelo, she say.” 

“I shall go and see,” Anne said suddenly. 

“It is not for the lady like you,’ objected Ibra- 
him. 

But Anne had already set off. The girl’s fear had 
infected her. What hell had her husband rushed 
into? She could not remain and wonder about it; 
she must go to him. 

They were well in advance of her, and swift run- 
ners. They had reached the Abbas before she was 
half-way. Her feet were impeded, too, by the slip- 
per iness of the grass and the unevenness ,of the 
ground, but she arrived at the plank gangway which 
connected the Abbas with the shore at last. There 
she paused for an instant. She might, after all, only 
be in the way. What could she, a woman, do in an 
affair like this? Then fear came over her again; 
fear born of the rustling swamp behind her, of the 
sense that evil was around her and about her. She 
was impelled forward, almost against her will, up 
the gangway of the ill-omened ship. 

There was a strong smell of fish and onions. The 
deck, visible by the light of a badly-trimmed oil-lamp, 
was dirty, and strewn here and there with empty pack- 
ing-cases, rolls of matting, angaribs and native crock- 
ery. In a corner a native woman, almost naked, sat 
with a baby in her arms, rocking herself to and fro. 
Not even the brawl that was in progress somewhere 


THE LURE 


339 

on the ship could tempt her from her dreary and hope- 
less tending of the emaciated little creature. 

Anne passed her and went swiftly towards the 
stem of the boat, whence she could hear hoarse cries 
and shouting. She had to avoid the bodies of several 
natives, swathed from head to foot like mummies, in 
a deep slumber already — probably sleeping off the ef- 
fects of the afternoon’s debauch. The whole place 
smelt foul. 

She stumbled on, almost feeling her way past the 
rough wooden living cabins on the flat deck. There 
was another light at the furthest end of the nuggur, 
raised by three steps. But these she could not pass, 
for some six or seven natives were descending them 
in haste. She could hear, as she drew aside, Peter’s 
voice raised in command above all the pandemonium. 
She guessed that it was by his order that there was 
this sudden cowed dispersal of the merissa-sodden 
blacks. 

The steps were cleared at last, and she descended 
them. A big oil-lamp swung smokily from a beam 
above a table. Two or three chairs were overturned, 
one smashed. A table in the corner was stained with 
wine from a bottle which lay broken beneath it. Not 
a native was left in sight save two strong fellows 
who were holding Angelo Papadopoulo, one each side, 
and the Sudani girl, crouching beside the prostrate 
form of Gabriel, and stanching a wound in the fallen 
man’s chest with a corner of her tobe. 

Captain Host did not notice Anne’s advent. Both 
brothers were still shouting at each other in a mix- 
ture of Greek, Arabic and English — both were un- 
comely, with blood and sweat. Mr. Papadopoulo’s 
coat was torn, his shirt open, his brilliant sash had 
become unbound, and dangled into the spilt wine. But 
though Anne could not hear Peter’s quiet order, the 


THE LURE 


340 

two Sudanese began to compel the ponderous, dis- 
hevelled and protesting Angelo down the ladder and 
into the nearest cabin, which they locked on the out- 
side, in spite of his resistance and Hellenic blasphe- 
mies. They paid no more attention to his ravings 
than if he had been a dumb bale of cotton. The fear 
and respect of the Englishman was in them, and 
when once these qualities are instilled into the native 
brain, the black makes an excellent fighting and serv- 
ing machine. 

It was the second time in one evening that Mr. 
Papadopoulo senior had been thrust ignominiously 
into durance. 

Meanwhile Gabriel staggered to his feet, while the 
girl kept up a perpetual wailing. 

'Throw down that knife! . . . Can you walk?” 
Peter asked. 

Gabriel obeyed, sullenly. 

"Yes, sare.” 

"Then tell the girl that she must stop that noise, 
and that you’re not dead yet by any means, nor likely 
to be.” 

Gabriel turned to the young woman and gave a 
rough command in Arabic. 

She became silent immediately. 

Peter was already looking at the wounds in the 
man’s chest and arm. "They are only scratches, but 
you’d better have them dressed. I left some things 
here this afternoon when I was attending to some 
one’s poisoned foot. Tell the girl to go and get them, 
and I will fix you up myself. Your brother can cool 
for a bit.” 

"Where am I to go?” asked Gabriel, in his broken 
English. 

"Wherever you like. I shall want a basin of water 
as well. Anne! is that you?” 


THE LURE 


34i 


“I came to see if I could help.” 

“You should not have done anything of the sort. 
Still, as you are here, you can help me with this 
scratch. You are not afraid of the sight of a little 
blood. There's Angelo, too. He's got a cut or so.” 

She followed him mutely as he assisted Gabriel 
down the steps and along the ill-lit deck. The Greek 
was evidently more bruised from his fall than hurt 
from the knife-wounds inflicted during the fight. 

“In this cabin,” he said, halting before a door. 
Anne opened it. A wooden table and a bed, together 
with a couple of chairs, were its only furniture; but 
there was an untidy debris of soiled clothes, drinking 
vessels, papers, and so on. 

“You seem the saner of the two; you can explain 
this disgraceful quarrel while I look you over. Where 
is some water?” 

“In ze goola — there. I spik English so badly.” 

“Well, I can understand you.” 

“Good. You blame me, Monsieur le Capitaine, for 
fighting with my brother. You call me by many 
names when you come. But I tell you it was not me 
what began, but my brother. I tell you I fight to 
defend myself.” 

“I shall hear what he has to say about it before 
deciding that you are the innocent lamb that you 
make out. I grant that you were getting the worst 
of it when I came. Hand over that towel, please, 
Anne.” 

“But I am the innocen' lamb! It is he who is the 
black devil. He essays to cheat me. He is a very 
bad man. Listen! This morning, before we go 
off in the boat, Mr. Goss he come on board. He al- 
ways talks to both of us the same. But to-day he 
says to Angelo somet’ing I cannot hear. And Angelo 
asks me to get the pay-book. So I t'ink there is some- 


342 


THE LURE 


thing they do not want that I am to hear. So I go 
quickly for the book, and when I come back, I lees- 
ten. Angelo says: ‘But how am I guarantee that I 
get the money?’ Mr. Goss says, ‘I tell you, you shall 
have it.’ Angelo says, ‘And I tell you that I must 
have somet’ing in writing, else I shall do not’ing.’ 
‘Very well,’ says Mr. Goss. ‘You shall have it.’ And 
he take out his book and he write in it, and he tear 
it out and hand it to Angelo. Then he says, ‘And 
your brother is not to know; it is the only safe plan.’ 
And Angelo says, ‘He is to be recalled by you, Mr. 
Goss. Don’ forget that.’ An’ Mr. Goss says, ‘Cer- 
tainly not.’ And Angelo put the paper in his pocket. 
I see which pocket. And this evenin’ he dine with 
Mr. Goss. I am not asked. I am put out. And I 
swear by God, Monsieur le Capitaine, that Angelo 
promise to me, and Mr. Goss promise to me, that we 
are the same, that Angelo get the same money as me, 
that he is treated the same as me. Now, he cheats 
me! He tells Mr. Goss, ‘Gabriel is no good; you 
much better send him away, and give me his money.’ 
Ah! . . . Well, I wait, and I tell Mariam (that Su- 
dani girl of mine) to go and talk pleasant to Angelo. 
I go and I look in the pocket of his coat which he take 
off in his cabin, and I find the paper.” 

“Where is it?” interrupted Captain Host, abruptly. 

“Here.” The Greek reached over for his torn 
coat, and, putting his hand into the breast-pocket of 
the dirty garment, he produced a slip of paper. 

Captain Host read it slowly, and then handed it 
over to Anne. 

“In the event of my being able to purchase £20,000 
worth of preferred shares in the Crocodile Leather 
Farming Company, I hereby agree to pay Mr. Angelo 
Papadopoulo £500 within the next six months, sub- 


THE LURE 


343 

ject to his fulfilment of agreed conditions, and an- 
other £4,500 when the shares are bought.” 

Gabriel’s sinister and yellow face became distorted 
with hate and passion. 

“Now you see how they make business for them- 
selves! They keep me out. Half that five t’ousand 
pound should be mine. Instead, Angelo get Mr. Goss 
to say that Gabriel Papadopoulo is no more necessary 
here.” 

“Anne,” said Peter, coolly, looking over the Greek’s 
black head towards his wife, “I think that the Lord 
has delivered the enemy into our hands.” 

She stared at him, a little tremulous. 

“I don’t understand.” 

“You will — presently.” He turned to Gabriel. 

“You don’t know what services your brother could 
render to Mr. Goss for that five thousand pounds?” 

“He said share in everyt’ing,” repeated Gabriel, 
doggedly. “What it was, I should share also.” 

“You wouldn’t care to share in imprisonment, I 
suppose ?” 

Gabriel looked at him. Goss was right; he had 
not a tithe of his brother’s intuitive intelligence. 

“If you are wise, Mr. Gabriel Papadopoulo, and if 
you would like to remain up here as overseer — sole 
overseer — I would advise one thing.” 

Gabriel’s black and bloodshot eyes were interroga- 
tion points. 

“Do you wish to be sole overseer?” Peter asked, 
dryly. 

“Naturally, Monsieur le Capitaine.” 

“Then you overheard the entire conversation be- 
tween your brother and Mr. Goss?” 

“I over’eard the entire ” He began to repeat, 

rather stupidly. 


344 


THE LURE 


“Yes.” 

“But what did they say?” 

“That you will tell no one, until you choose.” 

The light of low cunning broke out upon Gabriel’s 
face. He took a deep breath. 

“Ah — h! I compre’end! Monsieur has his own 
plan. I play fox.” 

“Exactly.” 

“Vairy good. I ’ear all the conversation. But 
what it is, only me know.” 

“And me. You have told me everything.” 

“And monsieur, who knows all. Only me and 
Monsieur le Capitaine know.” 

“You will go over to the Harriet now, and ask 
Ibrahim to prepare you a bed somewhere on board. 
You are all right, and you’ll find that the bleeding will 
soon stop.” 

The Greek went off into the night without thanks 
for the aid which had been rendered him. 

Anne hesitated at the door of the cabin. 

“You had better go back, too,” Peter said, looking 
up at her. “I will send some one with you.” 

“But Angelo Papadopoulo ?” 

“I can manage him. I don’t think you can come 
with me into his cabin. I have a good deal to say to 
him.” 


CHAPTER XV 


M R. ANGELO PAPADOPOULO was once 
again enjoying the hospitality of the Har- 
riet under enforced circumstances. To 
judge by the fact that a tin box, papered in gaudy 
colors and varnished over, stood beside the low bed, 
he had come for a stay. Mr. Papadopoulo surveyed 
it, and began with a methodical resignation to hang 
up some of the garments so hastily stuffed into its 
small dimensions. 

He consulted his watch and saw that it was two 
in the morning. 

“It is fortunate,” remarked Mr. Papadopoulo in 
the Greek language, with the sigh of a philosopher 
who sees some cause for rejoicing in the most adverse 
circumstances, “that I shall have plenty of time to 
sleep to-morrow.” 

He divested himself thoughtfully of his clothes, 
and selecting a night-shirt washed that morning from 
a mass of dirty garments in the box, he prepared to 
rest at last. Ablutions he made none. He had the 
contempt of a Christian dwelling in Moslem coun- 
tries for water. The law of the Prophet enjoined 
frequent washing, the tradition of the early Christian 
Church discouraged it. The modern Christian makes 
a virtue of inclination in the respect when he lives in 
the shadow of the Crescent. 

But Mr. Papadopoulo’s lucky star was not in the 
ascendant. He had lain in bed exactly three minutes 
when a gentle rapping was heard at the door. Mr. 
345 


THE LURE 


346 

Papadopoulo sat up sleepily, and cursed the knocker's 
ancestors and descendants be’ow his breath. 

“Min?’ he asked in Arabic, and, getting no 
answer, he rolled out of his sheet and went to the 
keyhole. 

“Who is it?” 

“Let me in.” 

He knew the voice, though it was thickened. It 
was that of Huntly Goss. 

“I am in bed,” he returned, peevishly. 

“Let me in, you fool,” said the voice, impatiently. 

“How can I let you in when I have no key? The 
door is locked, and Captain Host has the key in his 
pocket.” 

“Have you heard the engineer come in next door?” 
whispered the voice at the keyhole. 

“No,” replied Mr. Papadopoulo, unwillingly. 

“Then he is still below. His key may fit your door. 

There was a movement away, and in another in- 
stant the sound of a key being fitted into the lock. 
Mr. Papadopoulo sat on the edge of the bed, his fat 
face creased by weariness and disgust. 

“Now, if Captain Host came in, he become very 
angry with me,” he remarked, with plaintive injury. 

Goss had let himself in, and cautiously relocked the 
door behind him. 

“He is helping with the engines, like the engineer. 
You are perfectly secure from interruption for the 
present. Light the candle:” 

“They will see the light through the shutter.” 

“And deduce that you are not in bed yet, that's 
all. Now tell me what fool’s game you and Gabriel 
have been up to.” 

Mr. Papadopoulo looked at him sulkily. He was 
intelligent enough to perceive that Goss, in spite of 
his easy demeanor, was not as complacent as his man- 


THE LURE 


347 


ner implied. He, too, noted a certain indefinite air 
of degeneration about his patron, and was quick to 
profit by it. 

“You will hear everything to-morrow. Now I 
want to sleep. I risk everything for you, and you 
call me a fool. ,, 

“I beg your pardon, but I intend to know before 
to-morrow morning. Be reasonable. How shall I 
know what line to take in your defence. Come, An- 
gelo, you are a sensible man.” 

“I don’t know about that. It seem to me that 1 
offer myself to be kicked and I have no halfpence 
either, as you say in English.” 

“You botched the affair. Now you’re making it 
worse.” 

“I get the kicks and not the halfpence.” 

Goss drew out his pocket-book serenely. “There’s 
a ten-pound note — for nothing. You’ve done me no 
service. You’ve simply put me and yourself into a 
ticklish situation from which I have to extricate you 
single-handed. And then you and Gabriel make things 
worse by brawling on the Abbas .' ’ 

“Have you seen Gabriel?” 

“No — he’s in the engine-room with the rest.” 

“Then how did you know?” 

“I saw Ibrahim — and Mariam. But I got no sense 
from either.” 

“Not Gabriel,” repeated Mr. Papadopoulo, staring 
at Goss curiously, and speaking slowly. 

“No.” 

Mr. Papadopoulo gathered his nightshirt about him. 
Then he said — 

“To-day when you and I discuss about those shares, 
he heard. He did not leave the door. He heard 
every word.” 

Goss’s face did not change. 


THE LURE 


348 

“How do you know that?” 

“He has the paper. That is, he had it. Captain 
Host has it now.” 

“How did he get it?” 

“Gabriel took it from my pocket. He was angry 
because we had not let him in. I tell you, if Gabriel 
had been let in this, nothing need have happened. It 
was because of that he fought. Then he told Captain 
Host.” 

“It was your own wish that Gabriel was excluded,” 
Goss said. “It seems to me that you’ve made the un- 
holiest mess of the whole thing.” 

Angelo looked at his visitor with hostility and fear. 

“Now that you know everything, you must 
__ >> 
go. 

“Nonsense. You must gag Gabriel. Stop his 
mouth. That paper is no earthly value as evidence, 
without other support.” 

“How am I to stop the mouth of Gabriel?” 

Goss stroked his chin, as if to ascertain that it was 
well-shaven. “There is only one way, one effective 
way, of stopping the mouth of any human creature, 
Mr. Papadopoulo. There’s something more than a 
trivial criminal charge hanging over you. I am re- 
luctant to make any direct suggestion to you. 
Through your excellent mismanagement your lifelong 
liberty is endangered. Your brother is to sleep in the 
cabin next door. I will leave this key with you. You 
can be squeamish or not, as you like. I can simply 
put the danger of Gabriel’s being able to give evidence 
before you, and leave it at that. You see, it is a ques- 
tion of adequate persuasion.” 

“And if I stop the mouth of Gabriel I am certain 
to be hanged. And that is worse than to lie in prison. 
I am of an infinite gratitude.” 

“I am not suggesting that you should do anything 


THE EURE 


349 

criminal, Mr. Papadopoulo. Still, if you could induce 
your brother to disappear — effectually ” 

; ; as — ” 

“Please be cautious. There are so many means of 
swallowing up traces. There are so many effective 
exits.” 

“Such,” replied Mr. Papadopoulo, with irony, “as 
the crocodiles.” 

Goss took no notice. “No one will be able to say 
where or why Gabriel had decamped. He leaves ; that 
is all.” 

“And me?” 

“Here is the key. During the search, you can de- 
camp, too, but not, as you put it, to the crocodiles.” 

Mr. Papadopoulo spread out his hands sarcastically. 

“And where do I decamp? Into the sudd? Into 
the mouth of the lion or the hyena? How do I live 
without food? Where do I sleep? What reward 
do I get?” 

“You can get one of your people to row you up to 
the Nuer village and hide there till the Hurriet is 
gone. As to reward, you need not fear that I shall 
forget.” 

“I am grateful! And if they stop to look for me 
— where will they look? At once in the village, and 
on the Abbas. The Government is with them, and 
the Government is feared more than Angelo Papado- 
poulo. It is a child’s game to find me where there 
are people. And where there are no people, there is 
the sudd and the crocodile and the lion. Besides, 
suppose I am not found, how do I get away? This 
is not a paradise. I am here without anything to 
enjoy life. I ask you, is it an existence? Before I 
could look forward to leaving soon. Now, I am to 
hide like a rat in a Nuer hole. I am not the man to 
endure it. Where is there a theatre, an opera, a 


350 


THE LURE 


woman, a filet de bceuf, an electric lamp, a newspaper? 
And I am to endure this — in order to save you. Is 
it reasonable ?” 

“You will make your way down to Alexandria by 
degrees. There you can cash a draft for £500 on my 
bankers. Otherwise, don’t forget that your freedom 
for the rest of your natural life is in danger. Or 
perhaps you would prefer a more secluded existence?” 

“How am I to make my way down-river? I am 
a white man, a stout man, a marked man. There 
is no reason why the natives should hide me. Money ! 
They don’t know what it means — the animals! I 
cannot move about with a load of skins on my shoul- 
der. I can be arrested at any moment, the likelier the 
nearer I get to civilization. The Government boats 
will look after that. If I go up-stream it’ll be worse. 
The Government has an easy hunt. Africa is not a 
place to hide and seek.” 

“Of course, my dear Papadopoulo, if you prefer 
to risk a trial ! But you will certainly be placing your- 
self in a fix unless Gabriel can be persuaded to change 
his tune. Even then, there’s a black case against you.” 

“And you.” 

“I shall find my own way out.” 

“It will not be easy,” said Mr. Papadopoulo, with 
a sudden smile. 

Goss looked at him in momentary silence. 

“There is another way. You and Gabriel must 
pull together, and absolutely deny that interview with 
me. If it is a question of money, we will arrange 
that. There are a good many days before we reach 
Khartoum. I will contrive a meeting between you 
two somehow. It will be a lame story, but still a 
story.” 

Papadopoulo yawned. He was not a man accus- 
tomed to do without sleep. 


THE LURE 


35 1 


“There is a third way — for me.” 

“That is?” 

“Captain Host put it before me very nice. I admire 
Mrs. Host; what a beautiful and charming lady! 
Captain Host has a mind of the most reasonable. He 
has given me his word that he will do all his best for 
me. You excuse me, Mr. Goss, but I do not have 
that valuation for your sacred word as for the sacred 
word of Captain Host. With you there is no security. 
A beautiful lady write you a love-letter, and you hand 
it to her husband. That was not good. I give you 
my assurance, Mr. Goss, that that action shock me. 
You lose your head because you are angry and fright- 
ened, but to commit a treason against so charming a 
lady, that gave me to think a great deal. You com- 
mit treason against her; you may commit a treason 
against me. For that reason, I argue that it is better 
to accept Captain Host’s advice.” 

“And that advice is?” 

“To turn king’s evidence,” replied Mr. Papado- 
poulo, smoothly but with a nervous movement. “I 
am very tired; I should be grateful now to sleep.” 

Goss’s composure was shaken at last. His hands 
were twitching. 

“You Greek hound!” 

Mr. Papadopoulo stretched forth a reproving hand. 

“Hush; they will hear. You must go back and 
sleep — or there is the Nuer village, or the sudd. You 
can go down the river as well as me.” 

“You shall go down the river!” 

Goss drew out his revolver. He was capable of 
insane rage when once his blood was stirred as it was 
stirred now. 

“You will not improve your case,” said Mr. Papa- 
dopoulo, hastily, bobbing his head this way and that. 
“They will hear the shot. And there is the evidence,” 


352 


THE LURE 


“What evidence ?” said Goss, his eyes bloodshot, 
his hand still raised. 

“You see that I obliged Captain Host and wrote 
confession. He knew all ; I was not disclosing secrets. 
He lifted before me the golden banner of hope, Mr. 
Goss. He showed me that justice can be merciful. I 
tell the truth. It is a choice of evils. I must certainly 
endure something, but ” He shrugged his shoul- 

ders beneath the night-shirt. “I am a philosopher. I 
will end. And afterwards there is Alexandria, and 
the opera, and the toilettes, and the charming ladies 
again. I never lose the taste for these things. And 
I am a religious man, Mr. Goss. You propose to me 
to kill my brother. I am no Cain. For the moment 
my brother and I disagree. We shall be friends again 
by the mercy of Our Lady. Captain Host is perfect- 
ly right.” 

Goss had slowly put back the revolver, and sat 
staring into the flame of the candle. 

The sudden rage had died out of his face, which 
was imperturbable again. 

“You are doubtless ready for bed, Mr. Papado- 
poulo ?” he said in a quiet voice. 

Angelo looked at him mistrustfully, doubting this 
sudden calm. 

“Am I not in my night-dress?” he replied, in the 
tone of an injured man. 

“Of course. Well, our conversation has been use- 
less. You might have spared yourself the discussion 
by telling me earlier of your literary effort for Cap- 
tain Host.” 

“I thought that you ” 

“Would be annoyed possibly? You showed per- 
ception.” 

He slowly unlocked the door, and then threw the 
key on the bed. “I must pay you a last compliment.” 


THE LURE 


353 


“On what?” asked Mr. Papadopoulo, anxiously. 
He felt far more uneasy at this sudden victory than 
he had during the reserve of his trump card. 

“On your sound judgment.” 

He went out, leaving the door ajar. 

Mr. Papadopoulo stared, and thought profoundly. 

He went to the door at last and closed it, relock- 
ing it and dropping the key into his box. Then he 
glanced at his watch again, blew out the candle, and 
once more lay down on the bed. 

“A treason against so charming a lady,” he de- 
peated, dreamily. His own chivalrous attitude pleased 
him mightily. “That was not good.” 

And he fell into a slumber as profound as that of 
a child. 


CHAPTER XVI 


A N hour before daybreak the Hurriet’s paddles 
began to disturb the waterfowl and arouse the 
echoes of the swamp. Anne had spent the 
night in Mrs. Goss’s cabin. She had undressed in 
their own cabin; but after waiting for Peter some 
while in vain, she wrapped herself in a dressing-gown 
and went in to keep her vigil by the sick woman’s 
bedside. 

She dozed now and again, for Mrs. Goss was cer- 
tainly better. Whether exhausted by her attack of 
fever, or free for once of the pain which usually 
racked her at night-time, the invalid passed a more 
or less undisturbed night and was still sleeping when 
the sound of bare footsteps outside the cabin door 
roused Anne from her light but uneasy slumber. 
Gathering her dressing-gown close to her chin, she 
went out on to the deck. The dawn had strewn the 
sky with tress-like clouds of rose and gold, the swamp 
was still dark and covered with mist; the stars still 
visible. But the air was fresh, and she actually shiv- 
ered in her light gown as the wind blew it against 
her. Several natives were performing their Namaz 
on the deck at a little distance, their dark faces illu- 
mined by the sunrise as they turned devoutly Mecca- 
wards. She watched their prostrations and pious 
mutterings mechanically while she wondered what 
had happened after she had left the Abbas — what 
was to happen now on board the Hurriet. And she 
recalled, too, the glad thrill which run through her 
354 


THE LURE 


355 


veins when Peter had said “into our hand” in Ga- 
briel’s cabin. She had been glad, not because of the 
import of the sentence, but because by the use of the 
word “our” he had seemed to unite their interests, 
to range himself beside her once again, to make her 
cause his. 

The boat ploughed on her way, breaking the sav- 
age silence of the place, disturbed so seldom by the 
agency of man, with the noise of her steam escape. 
Flocks of birds went up like smoke, or flew away 
from the banks uttering hoarse cries. There were 
trees beyond, and at the sight of the wooded country 
her heart gave a bound of relief. It might have been 
a reach of the Thames before them, so green and 
park-like was the river-bank. They were already 
leaving the sudd district behind them, that desert of 
weed, that place of evil. 

Presently Ibrahim came up to her. Would she like 
a cup of tea? He was taking some up to Host 
Bey. 

“Is he up?” 

“Host Bey had been up a good deal of the night,” 
Ibrahim told her. 

“When did we leave?” 

“Before the light came.” 

“And when did my husband return from the Abbas 
last night?” 

“He came back late,” Ibrahim returned, vaguely. 
“He bring Mr. Angelo Babadoboulo with him.” 

“Is Angelo Papadopoulo still on board?” 

“He is in the cabin besides Mr. Antonelli.” 

He waited respectfully. 

“Yes, bring me a cup of tea,” Anne said. “You 
say Captain Host is up. Where is he?” 

“Up with the reis by the steering-wheel, lady.” 

“Very well, bring the tea to my cabin.” 


THE LURE 


356 

She made up her mind to dress at once. Sleep 
would be impossible, though her limbs ached with 
weariness and her head with strain. How, in Heav- 
en’s name, was the rest of this unhappy journey to 
end? They had circumstantial evidence enough to 
confound Goss, clever as he was. That he would fight 
to the finish she did not doubt. He might get out 
scot-free yet, for he was desperate, fighting with his 
back to the wall. She could not doubt, after her con- 
versation with his wife, that his need of money was 
imperative. He had staked everything on success this 
time. Failure now would mean that the last shred of 
his financial prestige was gone. He had failed too 
often to dare another. Usually he had managed so 
that the brunt of the failure fell on other shoulders. 
This time — her intuition told her that there were no 
open doors. Yet Peter held him in the hollow of his 
hand. To bring such a matter before the public eye 
was to destroy the confidence in Goss and his scheme 
altogether. 

Somehow she could feel no resentment against him 
any more. There was only an immense pity in her 
heart. She had credited him with qualities which he 
did not possess, but she could be fair to him, even 
now. Goss was morally deficient. He had great 
qualities. He had financial genius. But his soul was 
unequal to his genius, and it was that which had 
ruined him. To a certain point, egotism brings suc- 
cess, beyond that point, destruction. 

When she had dressed, she bade Ibrahim bring 
breakfast to her on deck, where she sat gazing at 
the increasingly green and English-looking banks. 
Herds of buck or of gazelle glanced up from their 
grazing as the steamer went by, mild and unafraid as 
the deer in Richmond Park. 

After a while, she went in to see Mrs. Goss, and 


THE LURE 


357 

found that the invalid was awake, and had break- 
fasted already. 

“I shall get up,” she said. ”1 feel a different 
woman. I can lie on deck as well as here.” 

The indomitable will of the woman was as strong 
as ever. Anne could only marvel at her and let her 
have her way. It was not the cooler weather alone 
which had wrought this resurrection of the frail body, 
but the force of mind which dominated it. 

Mother and son were put side by side on the deck 
where the life-giving breeze could reach them. Austin 
was perfectly well, though his leg was stiff, but after 
she had dressed it, Anne thought it better that he 
should keep it up, and Mrs. Goss supported her with 
one of the commands which the imbecile never dis- 
obeyed. 

Captain Host came down soon after, and wished 
them a collective good morning. He looked tired, his 
face was sallow, and his blue eyes graver than usual. 

“I need not ask how you are, Mrs. Goss,” he said. 
“I can see for myself. I thought the sudden change 
of temperature would revive you, and we’re getting 
into healthier country with every mile.” 

She thanked him. 

“You and Mrs. Host have been so kind,” she said 
in a voice which faltered. The hardness and antago- 
nism had melted from her manner. 

“We weren’t on the sick list. It’s the duty of the 
fit to look after the unfit. Our turn may come.” 

“Where is my husband?” Mrs. Goss asked. 

“In his cabin, I believe; at least I have not seen 
him yet. I shall go in to him in a few min- 
utes.” He reflected for a moment, and then said in a 
troubled way, “Anne, I must speak to you for a 
moment.” 

She followed him in surprise to the other side of 


358 THE LURE 

the boat. He began abruptly, without meeting her 
eyes. 

“I think that, as Mrs. Goss is better, you must tell 
her what occurred yesterday.” 

Anne made a movement of dismay. 

“It is wiser,” he added gently, still avoiding her 
gaze. “She cannot be kept in ignorance. Angelo 
Papadopoulo gave me a signed confession last 
night.” 

“Does ” she hesitated, “does Mr. Goss know?” 

“No. I saw nothing of him last night. Apparently 
he is keeping to his cabin this morning — though it is 
early yet — only half-past eight. But both Papado- 
poulos are on board. Mrs. Goss should be told before 
I see Goss.” 

She felt, too, that he had added internally, “And 
you must know.” 

He waited for a comment. Perhaps he expected 
that she might question him, give some signal of her 
mental state. But she said nothing. Had he looked 
at her, he might have seen something of her wistful- 
ness in her eyes. But he did not look. 

“I will tell her now,” Anne replied at length. “You 
must bring Austin over to this side of the boat.” 

Peter did so, pushing the chair across, and telling 
the ybuth that a wild elephant had been seen that 
morning, and that if he gazed hard through the field- 
glasses he might see another. Austin, always tractable 
with a person he admired, agreed without a murmur. 
And Anne and Mrs. Goss were left alone. 

“My husband wishes me to tell you something,” 
Anne began. And in a low, reluctant voice she related 
the story of yesterday’s events, only omitting the scene 
with Goss in his cabin, and his production of her note 
in the mosquito-house. 

Mrs. Goss kept her large sunken eyes fixed upon 


THE LURE 


359 


Anne’s face during the narration, putting a question 
from time to time in a quiet manner. Anne came 
to the end at last — as far as it could be called an end, 
and Mrs. Goss stared at the green bank, thinking, 
thinking. 

“What does your husband mean to do?” she asked 
at length. 

“I do not know,” Anne replied. “The circumstan- 
tial evidence was strong before. These papers ” 

“You mean that it is strong enough to prove at- 
tempted murder?” Mrs. Goss said, slowly. 

“My husband thinks so. Angelo intends to turn 
king’s evidence — in order to save himself — and there 
is the other brother too.” 

“But no one knows except your husband and you, 
and the Papadopoulos ?” 

“No.” 

Mrs. Goss still stared out at the bank. They were 
close to it, for the channel was very narrow. A whale- 
headed stork, antediluvian in his odd monstrosity, 
stood gravely on an ant-hill a yard or two back, con- 
templating the steamer placidly. He had a serio- 
comic air, as if a public monument, parodied. 

“Mrs. Host,” said Mrs. Goss, without lifting her 
eyes from the bank below, “do you remember talking 
to me late one evening a few nights ago ?” 

“Yes.” Anne’s mind travelled back to the night 
when that terrible sigh had called her into the dark 
cabin. It was the night when her faith in Goss had 
first been shaken. No— now she thought back, it had 
been shaken before his wife had accused him to her. 
Mistrust had come before that, though she had stifled 
it. 

“You said to me, 'How can you say such things 
of a man you loved?” 

“Yes.” 


THE LURE 


360 

“1 did love him. He was the only man I ever 
cared for very much — in a mad way, I mean. I 
sometimes think of that time — as the happiest time in 
my life. He has that power — that way — with women. 
No woman could forget. I have not forgotten. Even 
when I felt most bitter, I have not forgotten. I never 
gave my first husband what I gave to him. It doesn’t 
much matter whether I was blind or not, I gave it. 
Can you understand that?” 

“Yes,” said Anne. “I understand.” 

“What made me hate him so was fear. I was 
frightened for Austin. . . . But now ... it is al- 
tered. You have been very good to me. Be still 
more kind. Give me those two papers.” 

“Give you the papers!” Anne cried out in surprise. 
“The confession and the other.” 

“You are astonished. But all I want is to have 
Austin’s safety secured. If Huntly will consent in 
writing to let me put Austin — who is his ward, you 
remember — with people who will take care of him 
when I am dead, and promise that he will never go 
near him again, the papers need never be used against 
him.” 

“But they are our — your — chief evidence against 
him!” Anne exclaimed. 

“That is why I want them. I don’t want to hurt 
Huntly. He is my husband — and I loved him once,” 
Mrs. Goss replied, simply. 

“I think I had better tell my husband what you 
say,” Anne answered. 

She went over to the further side of the deck, 
where Peter was instructing Austin in the art of mak- 
ing cats’ cradles. 

“Will you go over and speak to Mrs. Goss?” she 
said. 

“How did she take it?” Peter asked in a low voice. 


THE LURE 361 

“Well. But not as I expected. And, Peter, do what 
she asks if you can.” 

“Can you make cats’ cradles ?” asked Austin, as she 
took the seat her husband had occupied. 

“No, I’m afraid I can’t,” she confessed. 

“/ can!” And the imbecile’s long fingers twisted 
in and out of the twine. 

Anne looked up suddenly to see Ibrahim standing 
by, a puzzled expression on his face. 

“I don’t know what to do about Mr. Goss’s break- 
fast,” he said. “I go four times to his door, and 
knock, but he make no answer. I think he have sun- 
stroke worse.” 

“Is the door locked?” 

“Yes.” 

“When did you see him last, Ibrahim ?” 

The Berberine hesitated. “After Mr. Babadoboulo 
come on board with Host Bey last night.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I go to sleep very late last night, because of the 
engines. And I see Mr. Goss come out of Mr. Baba- 
doboulo’s cabin.” 

“What time was that?” 

“About two hours before morning. Before that 
Mr. Goss wake me and ask where Captain Host was 
gone. And I tell him that Mr. Angelo and Mr. Gab- 
riel fight.” 

“It was wrong of you not to tell my husband of 
this.” 

Ibrahim’s eyes were wide. There were mysteries 
abroad of which he knew nothing definite. 

“Have you told my husband that Mr. Goss has 
locked himself in?” 

“I begin to tell him, but he say, 'Not now, Ibra- 
him, I am busy; I am talking to Mrs. Goss.’ ” 

“I will tell him.” 


THE LURE 


362 

“Taieb hader.” 

Ibrahim hurried off to superintend the cleaning and 
airing of the cabins, his honest brow wrinkled with 
thought. Truly the ways of the English were crooked 
ways, difficult to comprehend. 

As soon as Anne saw that Peter had left Mrs. Goss 
— and his interview was a long one — she left her seat 
and came forward a step to meet him. 

“Come to the other end,” he said, and she followed 
him. 

“I shall give her the papers,” Peter began abruptly. 
“Anne, the forgiveness of that woman is very won- 
derful.” 

“And you will force Goss to leave?” 

“He will jump at it. He is sure to bluff, but he 
has too much at stake to refuse. The thing goes 
against my conscience anyway — but to leave a 
man of his character at the head of a concern in 
which Government is interested would be too 
much.” 

“And the Papadopoulos ?” she asked. 

“Gabriel is in semi-ignorance. He can be sent 
back — in sole charge. We can drop him at the next 
wooding station. As for Angelo, he will ask nothing 
better than to get off so cheaply. We shall put him 
in the train for Alexandria at Khartoum.” 

“Mr. Goss saw Angelo last night,” Anne remarked. 
She told him what Ibrahim had seen. 

Peter’s mouth hardened. “If Goss tricks us in any 
way, my promise to his wife shall not hold good. 
How did he get in ? I have the key in my 
pocket.” 

“I don’t know,” she said. She added the less im- 
portant information that Goss had locked himself in 
his own cabin. 

“He will have to open it now. I shall get that resig- 


THE LURE 363 

nation from the directorate and the promise to Mrs. 
Goss signed this morning.” 

Peter turned there and then, and walked towards 
Goss’s cabin door. It was the last and largest, except 
for their own. 

Anne lingered where she was. She was full of 
uneasy misgivings. 

The shutters were still drawn over the windows 
from within. 

Captain Host rapped at the door sharply. Anne was 
not near enough to hear whether there was an answer. 
But her husband continued to beat at the door with 
an impatient hand. 

She followed him. 

“Peter, something is wrong,” she said in a whisper- 
ing voice. “I don’t want you to go in. Let me call 
Ibrahim to go in with you. I am afraid for you to 
go in alone.” 

He motioned to her to go back, and continued to 
rap. 

“Goss!” he shouted. 

There was no reply. The noise of the paddle wheel, 
the cheerful sounds which arose from the nuggur and 
the song of an Arab sailor on the deck above was all 
that they could hear. 

“I shall burst the door in,” said Peter grimly. 

“Let me come with you.” 

She saw by his face that he thought that something 
of gravity might have happened there within the silent 
cabin. 

“No, no. Stay where you are. It mayn’t be 

fit ” He left the sentence unfinished, and she 

obeyed. 

Peter put his shoulder to the flimsy and warped 
woodwork, and, after an assault or two, it gave way 
with a splitting sound. 


THE LURE 


3^4 

He went in, and Anne remained by the taffrail, 
waiting until he should emerge. She felt sick with 
apprehension. 

The song of the bahari above continued; monoto- 
nous in its rhythm, inhuman in its odd cadences. It 
was a song of Omdurman, and the drum accompani- 
ment to the melancholy theme was missing, leaving 
it pulseless. 

He came out almost immediately. 

A faintness crept over her. She clutched at the 
rail behind her. 

“Peter ! He is dead!” 

Her husband ran forward, and put out an arm to 
steady her. 

“Hold up, old lady. No, no — nothing as bad. 
What a brute I am to frighten you like that!” 

She did not believe him. 

“What was in the cabin?” 

“Nothing at all — but a letter. But before I open 
that, you are to come and lie down. All this has been 
too much for you, kiddy.” 

He led her to their cabin, and made her rest -upon 
her bed. 

“Read the letter,” said Anne. She could not per- 
suade herself that tragedy did not lie behind its sealed 
flap. 

He tore it open and perused it in silence. 

“Dear Host, 

“I gather from my amiable friend that you are in 
possession of a so-called confession. As I do not feel 
disposed to waste time by discusing the affair with 
you, it has occurred to me to make a trip on my own 
account. The Syrian clerk of the Abbas (once an 
engineer, and responsible by the way for the damage 
to your engines) has agreed to pilot me through dark- 


THE LURE 365 

est Africa, and will be well recompensed if he suc- 
ceeds. I am provided with funds. 

“I am afraid that a close examination of the papers 
of the Sudan Crocodile Leather Company will dis- 
close the fact that shareholders have been a little mis- 
led, but they are in excellent order — the papers I 
mean. My agent in Alexandria will be happy to put 
you and the Sudan Government in possession of the 
facts. 

“My compliments to Mrs. Host. Pray do not mis- 
understand the note which she wrote me in a fit of 
school-girlish enthusiasm. I never had such tiresomely 
Platonic relations with anything as attractive as she 
was then, and since we came on this trip she has had 
the poor taste to prefer domesticity to romance. Let 
me congratulate her on the conquest of Mr. Papado- 
poulo. 

“With regard to the latter — the elder brother — 
please convey him my compliments too. I rather re- 
gret the ten pounds. He has chosen the way of com- 
fort, and will, I know, be astounded to hear that I 
have undertaken an adventure which he considered 
desperate. But, then, Mr. Papadopoulo is a Sybarite ! 

“With best wishes, my dear Host, 
“Yours sincerely, 

“Huntly Goss.” 

Angelo Papadopoulo prophesied that Huntly Goss 
would never reach civilization alive. It was an im- 
possibility that he should do so, even in the case that 
he was not caught. Why, he could not even speak 
Arabic! And Host was inclined to agree with him. 

It was decided that the Harriet must put about as 
soon as the two women and Austin had been trans- 
ferred to the first down-going Government steamer 
in the Bahr-el-Jebel, and search for the fugitive. 


THE LURE 


366 

But the runaways were never secured. The god 
whose care is the blind, the drunk, and the impudent, 
perhaps had them in his carfe, for some months after- 
wards Captain Host received a note w r ritten from 
Mombassa to say that by the time the letter reached 
Khartoum the writer would be on his way to another 
continent. He had, it appeared, been passed off as the 
deaf and dumb uncle of the Syrian, and had success- 
fully embarked as a native as far as the Lado. How 
they reached the station at which they got the steamer 
remained a mystery. Goss remained the Great Goss 
till the end. 

As for the search, it was not as thorough, perhaps, 
as it might have been. Captain Host thought it wiser 
to let the disappearance solve many problems. And 
when he had made certain representations to his supe- 
riors at Khartoum, the Government did not exert it- 
self unduly to recover the missing director of the Su- 
dan Crocodile Leather Company. Mr. Papadopoulo 
journeyed down to Alexandria, and was no more 
known north of Wady Haifa. His brother Gabriel 
appears to have forgiven old scores at length and 
wearying of the sudd, to have joined him. 

And Anne? 

She read Goss's final letter over her husband’s 
shoulder, in the verandah one evening at Khar- 
toum, while Waggles pressed himself close to her 
skirt. 

Peter read it, and then laughed. 

“Goss is a genius,” he said. “He is born out of his 
century. He would nave been an excellent cundottiere, 
or privateer. He is the Perfect Adventurer.” 

Anne made a demure mouth, and was silent, as 
she was always when Goss was mentioned. 

Peter looked at her, and then took her hand and 
kept it. 


THE LURE 367 

“I am grateful to him too/' he said suddenly. “Do 
you guess why ?” 

“No.” 

“I benefited — by your broken illusions.” 

She glanced at him with a trace of mischief. “They 
were not broken,” she answered. “They were trans- 
ferred.” 









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BY 

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straight and narrow way.** — New York Times. 

Six Fairy Plays for Children 

Sq. 12mo. $1.00 net. Postage 8 cents. 


iar. 


MAR 8 1912 










































